Ghosts and Light
by Midnight Marimba
Summary: As the conflict between Wolfram and Yuuri grows, Murata is called upon for advice. Murata, meanwhile, struggles with memories of the past and desire to focus on the present. Focus on Murata & Wolfram. Contains same-sex romance, mild language, violence.
1. Chapter 1

Ghosts and Light

Rated M: contains same-sex romance, mild language, some violence. (I think it could be rated T, and if I receive consistent feedback to that effect, I may lower the rating, but I'm playing it safe for now.)

I do not own Kyo Kara Maoh or any of the characters in this story, and I make no profit from this story.

* * *

"Your Eminence—"

"Ken-chan, Emily. You can't call somebody 'Your Eminence' while you are tying bows into their hair."

Emily, a girl who looked a few years younger but was easily twice his age in this lifetime, giggled, as did the other girls and a few of the less self-conscious or more curious boys that stood gathered on one side of the children's room. A group of older boys, trying to maintain a stoic, macho attitude, loitered on the other side of the room, sneaking surreptitious glances at the activity around the Great Sage.

According to protocol and propriety, he really should have been out in the main hall, dancing and socializing and trying to seem especially wise and impressive. But he'd volunteered to shepherd the children out to the next room so that the grownups could get on with the phase of the celebration wherein drinks were served and small groups would gather and plot and strategize and threaten under the cover of the music, free of any small ears hidden under nearby tables to hear things they shouldn't. Political intrigue was inevitable at the Maou's parties.

Murata, however, was determined to take hold of this opportunity for innocent, youthful play while he still looked just young enough to get away with it. And after all, Ken Murata had only lived for some seventeen years. He'd already known too much about adult thought patterns and fears and ambitions and failures as a young child – he always did, these centuries – and with each lifetime added to his soul's memory, he grew more and more to cherish such childhood experiences as he could find. He knew ahead of time that this phase of life passed quickly enough, and old age, when he got that far, always held a wistful longing for childhood past and a pleasant anticipation of childhood coming.

So instead of going back out to be the Great Sage, he remained with the children, clowning until they warmed to him and some of the less shy girls initiated this game of dress-up, exchanging hair ornaments and scarves.

"Ken-chan, are you sure you don't want to try my green ribbon?"

"Ah, I'd better not, Tara. It's too long, I don't have the hair for it. Besides, my head's getting heavy with all these other things. I bet it would look good on Alicia or Will over there, though." He beamed encouragingly at the named girl and boy hovering shyly at the edge of the group. All in all, he'd found traditional girl-childhoods he'd lived through to be more pleasant than boy-childhoods, as the physical games tended to involve grooming rather than fighting. Fighting gave him nightmares of battles long past.

A sudden burst of noise signaled the door opening, and a wave of excited whispering started at the edge of the group closest to it. "It's His Majesty! His Majesty!"

"Um, hi there! Hey, Greta! Are you all having fun in here? Listen, have you seen..."

"Hey, Shibuya!" Murata shrugged off the impulse to try to stay camouflaged in the crowd, accepting that he had responsibilities he couldn't put off forever. Or at least accepting that it wouldn't actually work, because everyone knew who he was and who the Maou was and would point him out in about three more seconds.

Besides, it was fun to push Shibuya's buttons regarding the breaking of gender roles. He stood up and waved, turning the cheerful smile up to full intensity. "Did you come to join us? You can borrow Erin's beaded crab, I think he's losing his grip after Diera's jeweled bird and Greta's silver butterfly ganged up on him." He gestured illustratively at the side of his head laden with the named ornaments, causing a lavender silk scarf to slide off his shoulder and eliciting more gratifying giggles from his companions.

"Ahh, Murata! What are you...I mean, what...Um, no, that's okay. I was just looking for you, because there's a...situation I wanted your help with."

"What happened?" Murata gently edged through the crowd, hands touching shoulders to nudge bodies out of the way, serious now.

"Oh, nothing yet. It's just, a bunch of women dressed, um," Shibuya glanced at the nearby children who listened unashamedly. "Dressed in...colors that Wolfram doesn't like, they've been sort of cornering me for a while, and he looks like he's...going to do something...impolite, in about ten more minutes of it."

Murata allowed himself a mental sigh, then put the smile back on. "Well, if it's not an emergency, I'd better give back all these beautiful things I've borrowed before I forget what belongs to whom. Erin, here's your crab, thank you." He proceeded, conscious of and pointedly ignoring Shibuya's bemused gaze at the back of his head.

* * *

"Um, Murata, don't you think those girls were a little young to be flirting with?"

"As usual, Shibuya, you completely miss the point of playing dress-up. So, let's see. What you're telling me is that a bunch of ladies in low-cut dresses are chasing you more enthusiastically than usual, and von Bielefeld is about ready to set someone on fire."

"I guess that's about right. Honestly, I kind of just needed an excuse to get out of there for a few minutes without offending people." Shibuya rubbed the back of his head. "Murata, I really don't know what to do about him these days. He keeps getting worse about the whole engagement thing instead of better. I'm starting to wonder if he actually wants to go through with it. I mean, I understand he still sees it as an insult to his pride if I break it off, but how far is he really going to go? Is it honestly that rare to end an engagement, when neither party actually...you know..."

Murata employed his best encouraging, questioning, uncomprehending smile.

"Um, is attracted to the other."

Murata used looking around for Wolfram as an excuse to turn his face away before the smile faded. _I'm too young right now to be giving relationship advice. But, he _is_ the Maou, and I'm the Great Sage, so what can I do?_

"How do you know he's not attracted to you?" He forced some of the smile back into his voice so Shibuya could dismiss it as teasing instead of identifying the Great Sage trying to lead him into recognizing a blindingly obvious truth. It wasn't his place to scare Shibuya out of a relationship with somebody else. Maybe the question would follow him into the quiet time before sleep and prod him into considering the possibility without his typical Earth-bred immediate rejection of the opportunity. Probably not.

"Murata, not you too! It's bad enough he keeps up these jokes about our eternal love and our future as..._husbands_."

"You know, there are lots of men married to each other here. Those two dancing, maybe. They're at least in love, see how they're looking at each other?"

"Well, I...I know that, and that's fine, I guess, but, I mean, it almost makes this worse, because it's like it's an option the rest of the world doesn't blink an eye about, and there's nothing to stop us from getting married even though neither of us really wants to...I mean...neither of us likes guys. Wolfram even said so when we first met."

Murata's gaze settled on the blond standing across the room with arms folded and scowl aimlessly roving over the gathering. _That may have been true when you met,_ he thought, then, _Looks just like him._ He blinked and shook off that train of thought before it went anywhere, and he looked away as Wolfram's attention suddenly landed on the two of them.

"Shibuya, no one is going to force you to get married. You have to participate in the ceremony, you have to say the vows, you have to choose it of your own volition. If you get married and you don't really want to, you have only yourself to blame. It's not going to do anyone any good if you end up in a marriage you hate, either." He paused, adjusting his glasses and choosing his words carefully. "You don't have to decide right now – could be, in a few more years, you'll decide that maybe a relationship with a guy wouldn't be that bad after all." He plowed on over Shibuya's indignant attempt at denial. "But sooner or later you'll need to make a decision and act on it. It wouldn't be fair to either of you to drag this out another twenty years and then you finally get around to ending it. And in the meantime, it won't cost you anything to publicly treat him with respect. Better to end it sooner than later if you're going to try and make it obvious to the world that you don't find him appealing, if you want to try to remain on friendly terms afterward."

"I...What? How am I not treating him with respect?"

Murata did sigh out loud this time. "Look: say you have a girlfriend. Maybe you don't know if you like her all that much, but everyone comments about how pretty she is, and you take her to a party. You introduce her, 'Hi everyone, this is my girlfriend!' Then some good-looking guys come over and start hitting on her right in front of you, and without even looking at you she goes off to spend all night hanging out with them instead of you. How do you feel about it?"

"Um. I guess that would be kind of awkward."

"And then maybe you keep catching people looking at you all night, and once in a while when you try to talk to someone, they say, 'Hey, didn't you come here with that hot girl over there?'"

"Okay, okay." Shibuya sighed. "I guess I see your point. So you think that even though he's not attracted to me, he knows other people know he came here with the double-black Maou, and...damn. I've been doing this for ages, every social event, haven't I?"

Murata said nothing, just gave him a small smile of encouragement.

"I guess I should go apologize. Well, that wasn't something I really wanted to hear, but I guess I needed to hear it. Thanks, O Great Wise One."

Murata laughed. "Good luck."

He kept smiling at the back of Shibuya's head for a moment, then sighed again as his gaze fell on the blond prince. His duty as the Sage was to the Maou, of course, and Shibuya was his friend on top of that. But he hated seeing the anger and hurt in the other face, with the golden hair and the brilliant eyes. The startlement and the hope as Shibuya began his awkward but sincere apology was almost more painful, because as long as Shibuya didn't grow up about this, further hurt was inevitable. And this face, new to this lifetime but unavoidably resembling one long past, set him to remembering times when that past face had borne whatever was the current expression on Wolfram von Bielefeld's. Given the context, that meant he found himself reliving mostly painful moments, and a handful of sweeter memories that were still painful to remember here, in the palace of the Maou.


	2. Chapter 2

Murata arranged to stay a week longer so as to visit with friends and peruse the library. So it was alone in the library that Wolfram found him two days later.

"Your Eminence." Clipped, precise words announced the other's presence behind him. Not a threat, but possibly a challenge? Murata decided to try for disarming.

"My given name is fine, von Bielefeld." Pause, but no reaction. "It's Ken Murata, by the way." He turned with an easy smile.

The blonde stood with arms crossed and locked eyes with him. "What did you say to Yuuri?"

"I say a lot of things to Shibuya. I am the Great Sage, you know. It's my job to tell him things."

"What did you say to him...at the ball?"

"Well, let's see. I believe I offered him the use of a lovely beaded crab hair ornament, and then I told him that he didn't understand the point of dress-up..."

"What..." Wolfram hesitated with a pained expression. "What did you say to him right before he came over and started talking about girls and parties in the middle of the most incompetent apology imaginable?"

"I think it was, 'good luck.' Perhaps it didn't work?"

"Damnit, Sage, what did you tell him?" The eye contact finally broke. "What...Why did he..."

"Von Bielefeld." Green eyes focused back on him, hopeful, fearful, intense. "When someone comes to me for advice, I don't make a habit of repeating such conversations." Eyes down, again. "If you should seek advice of your own, I would offer you the same courtesy."

_Why did I offer that?_ Murata wondered, then answered himself wryly. _For the same reason I shouldn't have done it. Looks too much like _him.

Wolfram's mouth tightened. "Very well." He spun and stalked out of the room.

Murata turned back around to sprawl across the chair and stare at the ceiling.

He told people, it's not like he was the same person as all of those past people who'd grown around his soul. Accessing their memories was like watching a movie, observing a story that had happened to someone else. That was true as far as it went, but like with a favorite movie, if he spent too much time thinking about things that had happened in a particular lifetime, he started getting emotionally attached to that story and the characters in it.

So when he saw Wolfram von Bielefeld on a semi-regular basis, who looked so much like Shinou, save for the shade of his eyes, he inevitably started remembering the period of his first life wherein his soul experienced its first great love. And suddenly every tiny expression of hurt hit him ten times as hard as it would from anyone else's face, and he found that he wanted to take Shibuya aside and shake him, shout at him, look, look at this beautiful, proud, lively person who loves you, who is alive here and now and healthy and whole and pure, and look at what you could have if you only thought about it, and look at what you're doing to him. Stop crushing his spirit, stringing him along with thoughtless false promises and mocking him with thoughtless ignorant disparagements. Let me at least watch happiness and take comfort in its presence, and let me think of happiness past even if it is not mine to hold in the here and now.

But it was hopeless to command anyone to be attracted to a given gender if they were not already inclined towards it, hopeless to demand that one heart love another, and it was not his place to predict what Yuuri's heart might do in the future and not his place to secure or to break this relationship. Especially given his own emotional investment. Don't advise if you can't give reasoned advice – he'd held to this policy since the beginning and found that if he broke it, things only went badly.

* * *

It was another two days until Wolfram sought him out again.

"Great Sage, I apologize. My demands were inappropriate."

"It's Murata." He dropped a bookmark onto his current page and turned around with a slightly crooked smile. Today, it was eyes aimed over the shoulder, hands clasped behind the back, weight shifting from foot to foot.

Shinou, coming to him after a fight, strained as he released his deathgrip on his pride. Sorry. I was stupid again, and you were right. As usual. Forgive me?

_Stop._ Murata forced himself to focus on the present. "And I've already forgotten it, so don't worry about it." The friendly smile for this one, he thought, and pasted it on.

"Ah...thanks." Shift, shift.

"Alright, let's hear it."

"What?"

"Your question. You didn't come all the way down here to apologize and then leave, and we've not yet established a friendly camaraderie that would suggest you've come for the pleasure of my company, so you must be here with something to ask the Great Sage."

"I...oh. Well, I...yes." The arms came around to be crossed in front of him again. "Um. It's true that male relationships on Earth are never supposed to be...romantic?"

It was Murata's turn to look away. Don't look at the changeling, and don't let him see the sympathy in your eyes, either. "There are many people on Earth who believe romance between two men is wrong. There are also those of us who see nothing wrong with it. It generally depends on the influence of culture and family and personal experience."

A considering pause. "Yuuri is part of the first group." An expectant pause. "Isn't he?"

"I'm sure you've heard his opinions on the matter as often as anyone."

"Do people ever change from one group to another?"

"Do demons ever change their minds about whether all humans should be despised?" He accompanied this with a raised eyebrow and a pointed look, which earned him a small, brief smile.

Another pause, the marshalling of thoughts. "If..._someone_...who belonged to the first group had a forced association with someone in the second, and the second person had dropped a number of hints that he was romantically interested in the first...The first person consistently treated the second person the same as any other, except with frequent assurances that he wasn't interested in romance...What would it mean if the first person suddenly started acting _nice_ to the second?"

Murata almost smiled – the boy was catching on to how the advice game might be played without breaking confidences. Still..."What do you think it might mean?"

"Well...It could mean that the first person has changed his attitude, and is now interested."

Murata tried out the Expectant Gaze and waited.

"Or it could mean that he doesn't want to hurt the second person's feelings, but intends to break off their association, because he's tired of dealing with someone he finds...repulsive." Only a little tremor in the voice, chin elevated to compensate.

Murata closed his eyes. Give him some privacy. Or take some privacy, no way to tell how much the glasses hide in this light.

"Or it could mean something entirely unrelated and it'll go back to normal with no explanation." This came in a rush with a tinge of bitter humor.

"And naturally, the second person would wonder the same thing, and want to know the answer. In what way would his actions change, depending on the knowledge of it?"

"I...He would want to know if the attitude had changed, because the first person might be hesitant about expressing that, and he'd want to encourage it, make it obviously welcome. And he'd want to know if it hadn't, because he'd...like to face the end of the association with some dignity intact, and without...making the other person more uncomfortable." A little more tremor this time.

"And what if it was the third possibility, something unrelated?"

"Then...maybe there would be no change. Just...it would be good to know if the niceness should be disregarded, so the question wouldn't be a bother anymore."

"Mm." Murata weighed options, and went with Infuriatingly Not Answering The Question That Was Asked. "Well, I can certainly see why this person would ask this question and be worried about the answer. Now, I'm going to say something, which is an observation about my own experiences in life, or lives, and doesn't precisely relate to that question.

"I've found that there are different ways to approach love. When I meet someone that I think is amazing and wonderful and someone with whom I'd like to spend the rest of my life, I may have the impulse to plan out our future together. Imagine my future with that person and only that person, a constant presence in my life that I can rely on, no matter what, and who will depend on me in return. Maybe I will think of things to say, like, 'You are my better half, the one who makes me complete,' or 'I can't live without you.'

"But when this is the principle to which I align my life, suddenly my happiness is no longer in my own hands. I give the responsibility, the power and the burden of it, to another person. And when I try this, it always causes pain and grief. The other person will feel stifled by it and try to escape. Or the other person will embrace it and act the same way and then, on the off chance that we don't drive each other mad by demanding too much of each other, one of us will inevitably die and leave the other to waste away in misery. Or perhaps the person I've chosen will be completely oblivious to my feelings and cause me pain, over and over." Murata studiously examined the ceiling.

"Or," he paused for emphasis, "I can believe in my own ability to find happiness, independent of what any other specific person chooses to do. This doesn't mean that I abandon love as a lost cause, but I acknowledge that we are each a whole person, with our own goals and hopes and dreams and fears about life. And we can communicate these things, perhaps share them, certainly support each other in addressing them. But it is a partnership, not a merging of identities. And if the other person moves on without me, it will hurt, but it won't destroy me."

He wound down to the end of his monologue, steeling himself and glancing at Wolfram's face. Staring past him to the wall. Blank – almost, little hints of movement around the edges of the eyes betraying the strain of repressing emotion.

Coming out of Sagely Advice Mode, and a little bit at a loss where to go from here, he cast around for a some way to end the advice dumping on a less high-handed tone. Decided on Deadpan Absurdity. "And...one other thing I've learned through the benefit of my many years of experience." Dramatic pause. "If a person goes for a hundred years without shedding a tear, their eyes will fall out."

A beat of silence, then some kind of brief strangled noise that didn't quite fit under any simple label like laugh or groan. Murata allowed himself a small smile, then turned around back to his book.

"Anyway, I hope my story can be made to relate in some helpful way to your hypothetical situation, or at least that I didn't bore you too much. You're welcome to discuss it or anything else with me further if you wish, now or at a future time," he said to the shelves across the table from him, and with no immediate response, he picked up the bookmark weighing down his page and pretended to read.

Silence. Half a dozen footsteps, moving away. More silence. Then, in a voice rough with the effort of control, but with a level tone, "What if a person sheds a single tear, from only one eye?"

Murata blinked, then grinned. He schooled it from his face and mostly out of his voice before responding, as the exchange demanded. "Well, naturally, then only the other eye will fall out."

"I thought as much." Another beat of silence, then more footsteps, this time fading off down the hall.

* * *

It was another two days until Wolfram approached him again. This time, after Murata took breakfast with Shibuya and his usual breakfast crowd, Wolfram timed his exit to catch him in the hall.

"Murata, would it be possible to speak with you again, later?"

"Of course. Would you like to take tea in my room this afternoon?"

"Alright."

So now they sat facing across a small table with a teapot and solitude.

"Thank you for joining me. I invited Shibuya once, but he ran off when he saw the dishes." He gestured at the teacups and pot with pink flowers painted in intricate detail.

This sparked a slight smile and a faraway gaze. "He's such a wimp," softly. Then he looked up to focus on Murata momentarily and looked away as quickly.

"To be honest, it was sort of an impulse buy. I saw it in the market and thought, I should have a tea set, so then I can invite people over for afternoon tea. It worked especially well in a particular lifetime that I recall, different people every day, a good way to get certain social business done without too much worry of eavesdroppers. But that was another time and place, and here, I just haven't had many takers." He picked up his cup and took a sip, allowing a pause in case his companion felt like taking that hook.

"Is that...hard, sometimes, remembering past lives? I mean, if you already remember what it's like to have a long and happy life, and you've had lives with a lot of dramatic events, do some lives seem boring?"

"Well, there's always new situations and new people. So while things generally follow similar patterns, you still can have surprises. It's like if you studied history, you might be able to predict how political situations might unfold in the near future, but you wouldn't know for sure. For me, it's just a little more personal and anecdotal."

"Do you have...regrets? That carry over from one life to the next?"

Murata paused, thrown by the unexpectedly personal direction of conversation, and thought about it. "Not really. I mean, within a given lifetime, I've had regrets, but I sort of view death as a time to finish a story and clear the slate for a new one to start fresh. I'm not exactly the same person, I just get to learn from the mistakes other people have made by being able to remember them." Suddenly uncomfortable – he hadn't been so forthcoming about his unique experiences since he was a young child – he decided to change the subject.

"Well, enough about me, unless that's really what you came to talk about. Is there something else on your mind?"

Green gaze fixed on teacup. Belatedly picking up the cup, a sip, carefully replacing the cup. Finally, "If you remember..." Words running dry. "If you..." Head bowed, hand pressed to face with fingertips disappearing into blonde hair, elbow on table.

Shinou trying to express the agony of betrayal from someone he'd trusted with his life.

But also a person here, suffering, now.

"If it helps, you could always just talk to Ken Murata instead of the Great Sage. I can't guarantee the quality of his advice, but you don't have to make everything you say into a question. It's up to you." Teacup, sip. This time he didn't set it down, prepared to occupy himself with it until Wolfram could collect his thoughts.

"I don't...I can't...I don't think I can stop being in love with him." A barely audible murmur, dropping in and out of being a whisper. Murata felt his own throat tighten in sympathy.

"I...he...I used to think he was so stupid." A touch of the typical public Wolfram temper colored this and led into a louder, more passionate speech, interrupted by frequent almost-sobs against which he'd clench his teeth. "Just this ridiculous impostor. And I hated that he'd insulted me by proposing without asking, without intending — and he kept implying he'd break it, I wasn't good enough after all — and then he started to be interesting, maybe worth getting to know, but I still wanted to pay him back, so I, I dressed up in that ridiculous nightgown, and waited in his bed—" Half laugh, half sob now. "And he — it was so hilarious to watch, he really thought I was serious, then. So I kept doing it, and I think he finally caught on, but — then somehow, he turned into the most important person in my life, and — he..."

The outburst ran down. A sleeve across the eyes; they'll stay in another century, then. "I'm sorry. You must—"

"It's okay. Go ahead."

"I...I haven't told anyone about this." Still in lurching, choked phrases, but slightly less "I can't talk to my family. Mother would just try to set me up on some absurd series of dates. Gwendal would say I'm being too emotional, and Conrad, he's probably in love with him too – he does have Julia's soul."

Abruptly, he slouched forward, pushing his teacup out of the way and burying his head in his arms with a groan. "This is so stupid." Muffled, but intelligible. "He doesn't want me. I...When I'm around him, I feel like everything's right with the world, until the second he starts talking about 'The Engagement,' and then I feel like a...like a diseased stinkbug." He sighed, and fell quiet.

"What does a diseased stinkbug feel like?" Murata asked softly, wincing at the insensitivity of the question but unable to think of a better response immediately and unable to resist.

Silence for a moment, and he opened his mouth to apologize. But then, "Terribly sad. He keeps stinking when he doesn't want to and smelling fine when he does."

Murata smiled. If he could keep a sense of humor through this, there was still hope for him. "I can see where that would upset him."

"Hm." That was almost a laugh. Wolfram sat up, eyes still closed, elbows on the table and hands folded under his chin, now. For once, the mannerism didn't spark any old, emotional memories. "I suppose Great Sages wouldn't know what a diseased stinkbug feels like. Or make complete and utter fools of themselves over misguided sentimental nonsense."

"Oh, we have our share of foolishness. We just get to pretend we're talking about something that happened to someone else if we ever tell the story of it, and no one calls us on it."

"Hn." Another almost-laugh. "Like what?"

"Well...Once I was a peasant girl. It was in a human land, and I didn't know my father, but my mother did tell me eventually that he was a demon. Which explained a lot, like how we kept moving to different villages as I was growing up – it took a while before I caught on that this was to hide that I didn't age as fast as other people we knew.

"So one day, I was maybe thirty, my mother had died a few years back and I was lonelier than I could remember being in any lifetime. And I was in the market of this town near a keep, selling trinkets, little wooden carvings, and this nobleman came down to shop. He stopped and talked with me – hardly anyone did, I don't remember if I thought it was because they knew I was half-demon or if I just kept giving off go-away vibes – but he came by and bought something and was charming and promised to stop by again next week. And he did, and he was charming again, asked a little about me, seemed to be genuinely interested.

"I stayed around that town for a long while, living for the days that he would stop by and see me. Those moments seemed to be, at the time, the happiest I could remember being, certainly in a long time. I was sure that before long, he would be impressed by my intelligence and passable beauty and I would tell him I was half demon and it wouldn't make any difference to him and he'd ask me to marry him.

"And then he came around one day and invited me to his wedding. I thought he was proposing. 'Of course I'll marry you!' And then it was all very embarrassing as he explained that I was quite a nice girl, and he certainly enjoyed my company, but he couldn't marry someone who wasn't a noblewoman. I wanted to protest, 'But I'm the Great Sage, I have the highest rank possible, equal to a king!' But of course, this was in a human kingdom, and demon-human relations were poor at the time, so not only would that not mean anything to him in terms of marriageability, but it would likely enough get me killed.

"I even remember thinking, 'My next lives are going to look back and think this is hilarious.' But I was a mess for a long while after that."

He fell silent, remembering the dark, empty years after that, when the girl he'd been had shut herself away from the world, living in solitude, toying with the idea of hurrying herself along to the next life, though she/he had sworn, as a rule, to only do so at Shinou's request, in the event that the timing of a birth became important to his plan.

"I'm sorry to make you remember it."

"Hmm?" Murata realized he'd been staring into space, and Wolfram was watching him. "Oh, no, it's good to bring these things to mind every so often. Learning from mistakes and all that. It's not like I've automatically collected every life lesson into instinct – I still have to take the time to remember events and thoughts and feelings in order to gain anything from the past. Although," he smiled a little, the introspective, faintly self-mocking smile that wasn't for show and he suspected usually came out in a way that made people uneasy, "Now you've heard something I haven't told anyone since it happened. Not the whole thing, anyway, and not attributed to myself."

Wolfram dropped his gaze, found his teacup. Murata copied him, and they used tea as an excuse for a long moment of thoughtful silence.

Finally Murata mentally traced his way back to what else he'd meant to say. "Wolfram." Eye contact established. "You don't have to stop loving him. But – if you want my advice – don't love him at the cost of loving yourself. You're more than just 'the Maou's fiancé.' With or without him, you're still Wolfram."

A faint attempt at a smile at the empty teacup, one that was probably a second cousin to a grimace. Murata interpreted it as thank-you-for-trying-and-maybe-I'll-appreciate-that-later.

"Thank you for tea. I should probably go, I told Greta—" another tremor in the voice, but maybe now wasn't the time to pick at it, "I'd help her with her studies later this afternoon."

"I'm glad you came. Let's do it again sometime, hmm?"

Another smile, this one tentative but genuine. "Until next time, then."

Alone again, Murata sat for a while longer, reflecting. Maybe he'd needed to be reminded of the lesson of the too-lonely life. He'd been spending a lot of time in the company of books and ghosts and reserved shrine maidens. Ulrike was good to talk to sometimes about what it was like to experience more life-time than the average person, but she'd spent almost all of her years shut away in the temple with a steady routine, and he started feeling bizarrely guilty if he referred to too many different experiences. Shibuya was a friend, but they didn't spend much time in serious conversation that wasn't directly applicable to current problems or situations involving the kingdom, and he was busy, besides. It felt good to make a connection with a new person, to share some of the secrets he harbored simply for lack of anyone to tell them to, and to receive secrets to keep safe in return.

He decided to remain at the castle for another week. After all, there were a lot more books in the library. One soul's experiences made up only so much of a world's history, a society's knowledge. It was an entirely justifiable decision.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day was a small dinner gathering: Shibuya, Wolfram, Greta, Weller, and Murata. Wolfram sat to Shibuya's left, and acting on a sudden impulse, Murata sat down to the right of Shibuya. The meal passed largely in casual small talk, and then Shibuya turned to address him.

"So, Murata, any sagely advice today? We don't get to monopolize your great wisdom so often."

"Hmm, if you're mocking me, I don't think I'll tell you anything. It'll be your own fault when the kingdom falls apart for the lack of my great wisdom."

Shibuya laughed. "Okay, okay, you know I always appreciate your advice. I'd be a terrible ruler if I didn't have people to tell me about the five million things I don't know."

"Well..." Impulse struck again. "There is one thing that concerns me lately."

"Oh? What's that?"

"Well, I was wondering, have you set a policy regarding the stinkbugs?"

He saw Wolfram go still on the other side of Shibuya, who was eying Murata with a faintly skeptical frown. "Stinkbugs?"

"Yes, you know, whether to increase the resources to protect them from poachers."

"What? Stinkbug poachers? Why would anyone try to poach stinkbugs?"

"Everyone knows," Wolfram spoke, in what Murata would have considered to be a tone of straightforward youthful arrogance and scorn if he'd heard it from Wolfram a week ago. He drew the attention of everyone at the table, so that Murata thought his own sudden smile should go unnoticed. "That stinkbugs are an important symbol of the kingdom's culture."

"Which makes it a shame that they're endangered," Murata offered, drawing Shibuya's gaze back to himself, and he caught a glimpse of Wolfram disrupting his air of superiority long enough to wink at Greta.

"But...why?" Shibuya had lost the skeptical look in favor of puzzlement.

"Because of their special healing properties, of course," Wolfram continued in his everyone-knows tone.

"Healing properties?"

"If you place a stinkbug on your forehead when you go to sleep, and you are very still so it doesn't leave in the night, when you wake up, the symptoms of any illness will be reduced for days," Murata intoned solemnly.

"Sometimes it's long enough for a person to recover on their own from a bad illness, as they can recoup their strength while under the effect." Wolfram had switched to Serious Lecture stance, green eyes steady.

"In fact, the Battle of Three Hills was said to be won thanks to the blessing of the stinkbugs," offered Murata.

"That's right, the army had been traveling through swampland, and when they got to the other side, many of the men had fallen ill to swamp flu. The night before the battle, they found a stinkbug cave near their camp, and all the men slept with a stinkbug on their foreheads. The next day, they woke refreshed and able to fight much more effectively than the enemy's spies had anticipated. Thanks to this, they were able to hold the two larger hills until reinforcements arrived." While Shibuya focused on Wolfram's latest addition, Murata smiled surreptitiously at Greta, who had both hands over her mouth, and glanced over to see Weller with a fist raised casually to obscure the lower half of his face.

"I didn't know any of that. But you said they're endangered? Is it the poachers?"

"That's right," confirmed Murata. "Word got out, but the rumor wasn't quite accurate, and it was believed that dead stinkbugs would do the job, which was of course false. Only a living stinkbug can impart healing properties. But it didn't stop the sudden wave of poaching after that battle. And by the time anyone thought to protect the stinkbugs, their numbers had dwindled drastically."

"It's hard to protect them, because if they feel like they're being watched for a long time, they get nervous and move away in the night. So no one has figured out a way to guard them efficiently." The corner of Wolfram's mouth twitched slightly, and he covered by taking a drink of water.

"Say, Lord Weller. Do you think we could take Shibuya on a stinkbug search tomorrow?" Murata proposed.

The fist came down, revealing no more than the perpetual, affectionate Conrad-Around-Yuuri smile. "I don't see why not."

"Really? Great! It's been a while since we've gotten out of the castle, but it seems like we can't go without a reason. This way we'll be doing something important, too, right?"

No one seemed prepared to answer this directly, so Murata selectively ignored it and moved on. "I'd better go brush up on stinkbug tracking methods. I think I know where to find a book that'll help. Wolfram, you're pretty well-versed in stinkbug knowledge, would you come along and help me plan it out?"

"I'd be happy to."

"Alright, see you tomorrow! Morning?" Murata glanced at Weller as he stood to leave.

"That should be fine."

Murata held the door for Wolfram, and they walked down the halls together in charged silence. They made it as far as the door to Murata's guest room, which was after all much closer than the library, and Murata held his breath, grabbed Wolfram by the arm and dragged him inside, then shut the door behind them. Explosively, he let out his breath and doubled over, starting with a wheezing chuckle that infected Wolfram, and soon they both collapsed to sit on the floor, wracked with unrestrained laughter.

"Special...healing properties," Murata managed to get out.

"On your...on your _forehead_."

"Swamp flu?"

"What are we...going to do...if we actually find a stinkbug?"

"I don't know!"

Murata finally subsided to sporadic chuckling and dabbed at the corners of his eyes, out of breath and light headed. "Hmm, I haven't laughed that hard in a long time."

"Me neither. I...can't remember at all." Wolfram looked like he wanted to be embarrassed by this observation, but a smirk kept sliding back onto his face. "On your forehead," he muttered. "Stinkbugs!"

They sketched out a rough plan for the route of the next day's "stinkbug search," something not too far from the castle so that there should be no plausible danger that Wolfram and Weller would be unable to handle.

When they bade each other goodnight, Wolfram gave him another smile, looking as carefree and happy as Murata had ever seen him, like light and life and fire and joy. He found himself warmed by the sight and gave him a heartfelt smile in return before the door shut and the vision remained only in memory.

And then he had a moment of worry.

_Well, _that's_ not the most practical circumstance to begin that sort of thing._ _He's not even technically available. And when – if – he becomes technically available, he's going to still have his heart tangled up. The proper and sensible thing would be to give him some time and space to recover. Besides, this probably isn't in-love, yet. I'm almost sure it's only at smitten. _

_

* * *

_

The Stinkbug Hunt was a success, in that they made it until noon without cracking, at which point Murata hiccupped as he instructed Shibuya to check a rock for prints, and Wolfram let slip a hastily swallowed breath of laughter, which might have passed for a hiccup too except that it set Murata off, and then they were all laughing except for Shibuya, who groaned. "I've been had! Conrad, not you too?" And then he started laughing as well.

As they wound down, Murata glanced at Wolfram and caught him looking at Shibuya with an unguarded smile and eyes that were soft and only a little bit sad. He smiled a slightly sad smile of his own, but looked away before Wolfram could see it directed at him. Instead, he caught Weller looking at his little brother with a similar expression, affection dusted with sadness. Then Weller met Murata's gaze, and he thought, everyone knows. Everyone except Shibuya. Some kind of resolution would bring happiness to more than just Wolfram.

Murata spent the better part of the afternoon alone, peeking through memories. What was he feeling now, what should it mean? Infatuation? Friendship? Love? Compassion? Desire? He drew up memories of past relationships in other lives, trying to hold them up next to the current picture, but they all held the muted sense of belonging to the past, events faded with time and distance, as long as he tried to observe them in an analytical way, and he couldn't find anything that clearly matched.

Then, when he tried embracing memories more fully, back to that first love story, Shinou flirting overtly, Shinou taking his hand, the feelings from _then _flashed through him, strong and bright, and he pulled back, faintly alarmed without understanding why at first. Then he remembered the lifetime following that one, wherein he'd spent too much of his life living in memories, and he'd been aloof and unbearably lonely whenever circumstances forced him into focusing on the present. Next, he remembered other lifetimes wherein he'd tried the same thing he was trying now, comparison, and ended up more confused than when he started and hurting the ones he cared for.

So he tried to pull back, settle his thoughts into the ambiguous present. But his thoughts kept slipping, unbidden, into memory, and sliding deeper until he saw faces, people from the past, and a burst of emotion that would prompt him to shove the memory away and bottle it up before it affected his, Ken Murata's, emotions. A woman with brown curls, laughing. A man with gentle eyes and rough calloused hands in his own. An elegant princess. A red-haired healer bent over her work. Shinou again, framed in sunlight.

Finally he stood up with a groan of frustration and paced around his room, trying the meditative technique he'd learned somewhere along the way to clear his mind from memories and unwanted thoughts by focusing on his immediate surroundings, looking at the stone of the floor, feeling his muscles working, listening to the breeze in the trees outside, aware of his breathing, stopping movement without conscious intent, continuing to pull in every sensation and hold it in his mind until there was no room for anything else. Then, after a time, he released everything, and cautiously returned to his thoughts, focusing on the Wolfram question of the immediate past. He found his feelings to be at least as bewildering as they'd been earlier, with the added question of whether they were really how he felt about Wolfram or if some of the memories had merely stuck in his system with no basis in current reality.

Then he reminded himself, not for the first time today, that Wolfram was engaged and in love, and people were known to sometimes change their own acknowledged orientation. Certainly, it was a bad idea to build up his set of own hopes and dreams around a few friendly exchanges, and moreso when the other party was not emotionally or legally available.

He sighed and resolved to try to avoid repeating this process in this lifetime, and he decided to leave the matter alone, to wait until he'd experienced more as Ken Murata and to see what events would unfold around his friend. And a friend he would be, whatever else he felt, since it seemed to be a friend that Wolfram needed.

* * *

Events startled Murata by unfolding quickly, when Shibuya found him that evening. "I've never seen Wolfram laugh so much. It's good to see him happy." A glance. "I'm glad you two are becoming friends." The disarmingly sincere, charming, unself-conscious smile that had won him the astonishment and alliance of other nations.

"Mm. Yes, he makes good company."

"I've been thinking about what you said. It's...not really fair to keep this going, is it? I mean...I'll talk to him about the status thing, if he's still worried about that, maybe I can give him some other title or something to make up for it. If I do it while he's in a good mood, maybe he won't get too mad about it."

_Yes! Set him free, let me have him! No, don't make him sad, not now while he's smiling..._

_Don't advise if you can't give reasoned advice._ Murata kept his face still against the sudden flare of emotions. He noticed Shibuya looking at him hopefully, and he scrounged for some appropriate truism.

"Think things through carefully, and then be true to yourself. That's the best I can tell you."

"Right...Okay. Thanks, Murata."

Murata managed a dip of the head and a hand raised in farewell as Shibuya left.


	4. Chapter 4

He slept uneasily, worrying in his sleep, and he woke in the morning at a light tap on his door. "Enter," he called, sitting up, and a maid peered inside. "Oh, Your Eminence! I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's no problem. Is there something...?"

"Yes, Your Eminence, I was asked to deliver a note by Lord von Bielefeld."

Murata threw back the covers and fairly jumped out of bed. "Thank you," he said, taking hold of the proffered missive and unfolding it.

_Request afternoon tea._

_If none makes them fall out, how many does it take to seal them shut?_

Murata bit his lip. He had an urge to drop the note and rush down the halls in his pajamas, but he decided to give his friend the option of privacy for the morning. So instead, he found a fresh piece of paper and scrawled a reply.

_Tea or any time. Available now if requested._

_18,550._

He sent the maid off with the note and a clumsy attempt at a reassuring smile. He dressed, sat down to pretend to read, and fidgeted with a bookmark until a reply arrived.

_Come at own risk._

_Half of quota used._

He thanked the maid, set out down the hall, turned around to hail the maid again, requested a light breakfast for two to be left outside Lord von Bielefeld's room, thanked her again, and hurried on his way.

He arrived at the double-door to his friend's room and tapped. No answer. He knocked a little louder and called, "Wolfram? It's Ken."

A moment more and one side of the door opened wide enough for a person to slip inside. Murata obliged, and found Wolfram closing the door behind him, having carefully kept out of line of sight of anyone that might be passing by in the hall. Wolfram left one hand on the door and leaned against it, face downturned so that his hair obscured it, blue pajamas rumpled and damp around the sleeves.

Murata waited, unsure if he should say or do anything at all right away, browsing memories to look for a similar situation, and after a moment Wolfram turned around, keeping his face pointed away from Murata, and gestured wordlessly at an overstuffed chair next to a small table with a handful of books. Murata moved to sit as indicated, and watched Wolfram haltingly pace around the room, apparently undecided as to whether he wanted to sit or stand. Finally, he stopped next to the bed, which sported tangled blankets trailing over the edge, and sank to the floor with his back to it, arms loosely resting on knees pulled up towards the chin. Hair still across his face, stuck to it in places.

"It's over." Low, rough. "He ended it."

"Last night?"

Nod. A few minutes of silence. Murata shifted into a comfortable position.

"You didn't have to come here right now. I...don't think I'll be very good company for a while."

"I don't mind. Um...I'm not really sure what to say or do, so tell me if there's something you think would help, but I didn't want you to be alone right now."

Moment of silence. "Make sure the swords stay sheathed?" This with a self-mocking twist of the mouth and black humor lacing his voice, still pitched low and soft.

Murata sat perfectly still for a moment, then said softly, "Among other reasons. If you were thinking that way, I wish you'd called on me sooner."

A sigh, and a hand coming up to finally scrub the hair and the tear streaks off of the face, revealing dark circles under the eyes. "I wasn't, really. That would make..." voice closing up for a moment, "Him sad. And I still don't want that." A few carefully even breaths. "Never want that."

"Well...in this regard, I guess I'm glad of it."

Another moment of quiet. An outburst – "He wants to be _friends_." A flash of determined anger brought the volume up, rough voice still unwieldy. "No, not that, he just _assumes_ it. 'You'll always be my friend, no matter what.'" Voice breaking at the end.

Another moment, and the next sound was a tap at the door. Wolfram glowered fiercely in its direction, but the sound didn't come again.

Low growl, "Don't want anyone to see me like this." Perhaps consideration of evidence to the contrary: "You don't count. You've already seen me being a complete wimp about this."

Murata smiled crookedly, then looked suddenly at the door. "Oh! That might be breakfast. I told them to leave it outside. Don't worry, I'll go see."

A moment later, he carried in a tray that held pastries, fruit, and juice, and kicked the door shut behind him. He placed the tray on the floor in front of Wolfram and sat down next to him.

"I'm not hungry."

Murata eyed the tray, picked up the stickiest looking pastry, coated with glaze, and pressed it firmly into Wolfram's hand. Then he picked up one for himself, sat back so that his shoulder bumped into Wolfram's, and paused expectantly.

Wolfram left his pastry hand where it was and stared at it. "What." He moved his mouth a little, then shut it, apparently giving up on finding more words.

"Hurry up, I'm starving."

He thought he could see Wolfram looking at him from the corner of his eye, though he hadn't turned his face.

"The host has to take a bite before the guest can eat anything." No reaction. "That means you, since it's your room." Nothing. "It's the rules."

"Whose rules are these?" A hint of amusement? A slight tone of challenge? Murata hoped.

"Everyone knows that's the rule for breakfast amongst gentlemen eating from a tray on the floor in a private gathering."

"Of course." Definitely wry, now, if still subdued. Wolfram shook his head slightly and conceded defeat by taking a small bite.

Murata nodded and started eating with more enthusiasm than he really felt like putting forth. "Eat more. I don't care if you're not hungry; I won't forgive you if half of this is left on the tray and the cook is so insulted that neither of us is given anything besides plain lettuce to eat for the rest of the day."

Finally, an identifiable smile. They sat shoulder to shoulder and ate breakfast, Murata using the absurdities game to draw Wolfram out until he was smiling more than not, and he was satisfied afterwards that his companion was not going to waste away.

Murata pushed the nearly empty tray away with his foot and stretched out his legs, and steered the conversation to minutiae, rambling about details of his life on Earth and day-to-day living at Shinou's temple. Wolfram seemed content to listen, venturing a very occasional question to clarify some unfamiliar detail, which reassured Murata that this distraction wasn't unwelcome.

Then came another timid tap on the door. Wolfram tensed next to him.

"Wolfram? Are you in there? It's me. Wolfram! Can I come in?" Though muffled, the voice clearly belonged to Shibuya.

Wolfram closed his eyes and swallowed. Then he took a deep breath, and hoarsely yelled, "Go away!"

"Wolfram, are you – you're mad, aren't you."

"Wimp," Wolfram breathed. "I'm not mad," he shouted furiously, "But leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you right now."

"Oh. Uh, okay."

Wolfram waited, glaring at the floor with jaw clenched, and when nothing else proved forthcoming, he slouched, forehead resting against his knees. Murata looked at him with concern: he seemed to be weeping, silently, body rocking with the effort of keeping everything inside.

"Honestly, I've never seen a more miserable-looking method of crying. It's all right, it's just me here, and I've already seen anyway, right?" This won him something that seemed to be a laugh and a sob in one.

With a notion that a comforting touch probably wasn't something Wolfram had experienced much for a long time, he reached out and rested a hand lightly on his friend's far shoulder, and when it wasn't shrugged off, he gently pulled so that Wolfram sat up straight with Murata's arm draped across his shoulders. For a moment the shoulders stayed tense, desperately controlled, and then with an explosive breath, Wolfram relaxed into a more normal quiet crying.

When the crying trickled off in favor of exhaustion, and the blond head drooped down unaware to rest on Murata's shoulder, he fell into a reflective mood, thinking about lives and loves and friendships that existed centuries ago, and feeling that people in any time and place were mostly the same as people in any other, and always a little bit different. Sometimes, he thought, it's helpful to remember what worked and what didn't in the past, and sometimes, it works to just blunder ahead as best one can without thinking too far ahead or behind.

Then he let his mind be still and focused on the current world. Warm presence next to him. Physical connection, human touch. Comfort, trust. Don't think about it, don't read into it. Just appreciate its presence. Just be.

He found he'd started drifting off, himself, when another tap on the door brought him back to alertness.

"Wolfram?" Pause. "Wolfram, it's Conrad. I'm coming in."

Weller stepped into the room, and Murata caught the anxiety on his face as he looked in, until he located the pair of them. Then he smiled, and he met Murata's eyes. "Thank you," he said, softly. Murata smiled back.

The door closed behind him, and he drifted closer, quietly. "I just found out. How is he?"

"Better than he was, I think. I hope." Murata tried speaking softly as well, but Wolfram stirred and looked up blearily. Then he sat up suddenly, dislodging Murata's arm and looking for a moment like he might bolt or try to throw somebody out of the room, before he gave it up as too much effort and collapsed back against the bedside.

"Conrad, you don't need to be here." Wolfram tried a sleeve across the face, as though to erase all signs of his distress. "You don't...need to see me like this."

"Wolfram..." Weller moved closer and joined them, sitting down on the other side of Wolfram, back resting against the side of the bed in imitation of the two of them. "I won't ever think less of you for showing emotion."

"Hm." Wolfram shifted uneasily and moved his mouth a couple times as if he wished to protest, but he relaxed and became still after a moment. Then, softly, "Yuuri told you?"

"Yes."

"Why did you come here?"

"I was worried about you."

Wolfram seemed to think better of continuing that line of questioning. He stared blankly across the room. Then, "It's not like I couldn't have seen it coming." Pause. "It was...pretty obvious, really. That he never..." He trailed off.

"He was raised in a different place, with different beliefs. There's nothing you could do about that."

Wolfram considered. Then he said, in a very small voice, "He could have changed his mind. Eventually."

Gently, "It's possible. But how long would you have to make yourself miserable, in the meantime?"

Wolfram sighed, and didn't answer.

Another few moments, and Conrad – at some point in the last five minutes, Murata had stopped thinking of Weller by his last name – began speaking again. "You know, I think our family is full of people who put themselves in painful situations regarding love."

"Julia," murmured Wolfram.

"Yes."

"Do you love Yuuri?" Wolfram bit his lip, looking like he wanted to retract the question.

Conrad paused before answering. "I do love Yuuri, but, it's not...It's similar to if she'd had a child. That child would be like her in some ways, but he would be a different person. And I'd want to know that child, and protect him, because it is a way to honor her memory." Another pause. "In Yuuri's case, since I've come to know him, the way I feel about him is a lot like the way I feel about my younger brother."

Wolfram looked up, startled, at Conrad, who was studiously inspecting the ceiling. He looked away as quickly, then bowed his head with an involuntary smile.

"So." Wolfram cleared his throat. "Who else? In our family?"

"Well, there's Mother. I can't say I entirely understand her outlook on love, but I know she's had her share of sorrow because of it. Particularly with some of our fathers."

They were silent for a moment, apparently in mutual agreement.

"...What about Gwendal?" Wolfram asked, the humorous tone sneaking his voice again.

"Gwendal...He doesn't show much, and he never talks about it, but I'm relatively certain he torments himself as much as the rest of us, in his own way."

"What? He doesn't even talk to anyone in a, a conversational way. I can't see..." Wolfram trailed off, frowning. "Does it have to do with Anissina?"

"That is my suspicion."

"Huh."

Murata felt his grasp of the conversation slipping, lacking knowledge to interpret the implied references to previous events, so he let himself listen to the undercurrent, Wolfram's gradual relaxation and willingness to be drawn in, and the tentative overture on Conrad's part evolving to warmth. He wondered how long it had been since the two brothers had talked like this, and he guessed it was long overdue.

"Conrad? I...I'm sorry I was so horrible to you for so long...big brother."

Over Wolfram's bowed head, Murata could see Conrad smile. "If I have been redeemed in the eyes of my younger brother, I am deeply relieved."

Another period of quiet. Murata looked away, allowing them privacy with their thoughts.

"I don't know what to do." Wolfram's voice was back to the low, soft tone of difficult confessions. "I want to keep on protecting him, but I don't know if I can be around him and...maintain my composure."

Murata took a long moment in thought to try to craft some advice or input, but Conrad beat him to it. "Is it so different from how things were yesterday? He considers you a friend, as he always has."

"...I guess so. It's just...it was easier to pretend, before. I just...avoided thinking about it. Much." After a moment, "How did you...what was it like, with Julia? Did – did you ever tell her?"

"I never told her. But I think she knew. And she still made her choice, and it wasn't me."

A respectful silence. Softly, "I'm sorry."

"It is how it is. I won't say I've never thought about how else things could have been, but I've learned to try and be grateful for what there was – that I knew her at all, that she...Well. It helps to have found other things in life to focus on, now, besides the might-have-beens."

"Yuuri."

"Largely, yes."

"Like a brother. Or...a son."

"...Yes."

Wolfram closed his eyes and swallowed. "I..." His voice failed him again, and he took a few shaky breaths. "I don't know what to do regarding Greta. If I'm not...if...I won't be her father anymore." Tears again, seeping.

This one, Murata felt he could field, having observed or lived through a hundred stories of broken families, the same tragedy in different configurations. "Wolfram. You'll always be a part of her life, even a father to her, as long as you continue to put the effort into it, whether the title's officially there or not. Do you really think Yuuri is going to suddenly shut you away from her?"

This broke free a fresh start to the tears, and Wolfram put an arm over his knees to cry into. "No."

This time it was Conrad who put a comforting hand on the shoulder nearest to him, and they let him purge this latest worry until he calmed.

He sat up, sleeve passing over his face, and Conrad let his hand drop. "Sorry," from the younger brother.

"It's all right," from the older brother.

"Don't you have lessons with...lessons to give today?

"This was more important."

"You'd better go, or he'll get worried and come looking, and I'm still not ready to see him."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah."

Conrad leaned forward to peer around him and met Murata's eyes. "Will you stay with him?"

"Gladly."

The older man nodded, cast one more affectionate look at his brother, and stood. "Let me know if there's anything else I can do."

As Conrad walked towards the door, Murata thought of something. "Conrad – excuse me, Weller—"

Conrad smiled at him. "You may call me Conrad if you wish, Eminence."

"Well...I guess you'd better start calling me Ken, then. Ah, could you ask someone to bring us lunch later? Ask them to knock and leave it outside the door again."

"Of course."

After the door closed, Wolfram shifted, stretching his legs out from the huddled position he'd been in all morning. "I...didn't expect that."

Murata smiled at him. "Maybe it's not the thing that you've been wanting the most, but there are people that love you."

"Mm." Wolfram stretched, and caught Murata off-guard with a change of subject. "What about you? Do you...miss your family, when you're here?"

Murata's smile faded, and he looked away. "I...sometimes. But...well."

"Sorry. You don't have to talk about it."

Murata was silent a moment, flooded with memories that held the more intense emotions that had collected in this lifetime. The shouting, the departure, the loneliness, the sneaking guilt.

"It's just my dad, really. My mother left when I was young, and I have no brothers or sisters. I..." He hesitated, a little surprised to find the remembrance still affected him, when he was almost grown, now, and had grown used to borrowing memories from other lives to make sense of things in this one. "It was when I was old enough to have memories of when we were happy, a family. And after I'd started trying to tell them about the memories. Just after I'd stopped, actually – they'd taken me to a doctor, which was what it took this time around for me to learn not to talk about it to most people, because you don't go to a doctor all the time if there's nothing wrong with you. And on Earth, there's certainly no one who will recognize you as the reincarnation of the Great Sage – everyone will just think you're crazy.

"Anyway, it was a little while after that, they started fighting, and she left. She said it wasn't my fault, but she had to go. And then I got a little older, and met some other kids whose parents were apart, but they still got to spend time with both parents, and I...started wondering..." Now Murata felt his own composure slipping, childhood guilt welling up from somewhere buried. "Maybe it was my fault, maybe if I'd seemed like a normal child – maybe if I'd been a normal child – she would have stayed, and we'd all have been happy together..." He swallowed against the sharpness in his throat, his turn to stare away, avoiding green eyes. "It's stupid, I know, no child can be that responsible for their parents – but – damn. I thought I was over this."

They were both leaning back against the furniture, and side by side, so Wolfram shifted a little closer until their shoulders touched, as Murata had brazenly initiated at breakfast to help distract him. Murata closed his eyes and smiled crookedly, drawing comfort from the contact.

"Anyway, it's...good to see my father when I've been over here for a while, but he's pretty absorbed in his work, so he doesn't pay much attention to what time I come home, and I'm not sure he'd notice if I was gone there for a few days."

Murata fell silent with mixed feelings about sharing so much. It was probably good to be letting some of this out, lessening the burden of it, but he felt uncomfortable to have this part of himself exposed, not safely behind the happy-go-lucky Ken Murata face nor the mysterious and aloof Great Sage face.

"Do you like it better, here?"

Murata considered for a minute. "I feel like this is where I belong. There are important, useful things I can help with, and I can make use of the memories more, instead of keeping them secret all the time. It's like it's easier to be who I'm supposed to be."

"So, you're happier here?"

"I..." He thought about the calm routine of school, the beach with people running and laughing, the occasional warm moments with his father, the exuberance shared with Shibuya's Mama-san. He thought about war, moments of danger and fear, people struck by disaster, people's hearts being changed by a charismatic ruler who believed in peace, libraries full of knowledge that complemented his own. And he thought of the past week, growing roots to what might become a deeper friendship than he'd had in this life, and he smiled. "Yes, I think so."


	5. Chapter 5

They spoke of lighter subjects into the afternoon, both a little worn out from sharing too-emotional, too-intimate thoughts. Murata found it encouraging that after a while, Wolfram was able to speak of things that had happened in the past year and to refer to Shibuya by name without any strain in his voice.

He'd been debating during all the most recent lulls in conversation whether he should try to ask about anything else regarding Shibuya when Wolfram brought it up himself, voice teetering on the edge of unsteadiness, but otherwise casual.

"You know, he said something to me once, something like, love should be a thing you share with everyone, not something you keep for yourself, or only between two people. I completely disagreed, because I – I wanted some kind of fairy tale love. Something out of one of the books Mother gave to me a few decades ago." He glanced at a bookshelf across the room with a mocking smile. "The handsome prince to fall in love with me. Suddenly realizing that he couldn't live without me, that I was the one who'd always been there, would always be there for him. But...that's not really who he is. He loves the whole world, commits himself fully to every person that will give him the time of day. And it's...appropriate, for a king. For who he is and what he accomplishes by it. So...I don't know. I'd probably go crazy even if we ended up married. I don't want to change that about him, but I don't know if it would really make me happy. I'd just get more jealous..."

He glanced briefly at Murata and looked away again. "Is that bad? To want to be with someone who is committed first to me and then to the rest of the world?"

Murata smiled. "It might be, if you're in love with a king. But in general – I don't think so. As long as you don't betray your own principles in life for the sake of the other person."

Wolfram glanced at him again, and Murata thought he might be being too obscure. "I mean, if you believe in some cause, say, maybe you're a pacifist, and you seek the end of all killing, and that's something that defines you, you could say you're committed to the rest of the world in that way – you sincerely believe it will make the world a better place, and make more people happy. Then if you fall in love with someone, get married, make a commitment to them, and then you find out that they're secretly an assassin, someone who kills for money, perhaps you should rethink your commitment to that relationship."

Wolfram was frowning faintly, and Murata laughed. "Well, maybe I'm coming at this sideways. Most people who fall in love and manage a long-lasting commitment tend to not be so divided on their most important beliefs, because a huge difference there would distance them from each other emotionally. I guess what I'm saying is that in my ideal love story, the individuals involved are committed first to themselves – they hold true to whatever is really important to them, personally – second to each other, so they can support each other as needed, and then to anything else. And it may work best if the personal and the relationship commitments complement each other – two pacifists, or two assassins."

Wolfram was still frowning, but he said, "I can't tell if you're saying something really deep or stating the obvious."

Murata laughed again. "That's the whole trick to being a Great Sage, you know. Confuse people enough so that they think you're wiser than them."

"Hah."

Another lull, and Murata asked, "What is it that you believe in, Wolfram?"

Wolfram considered for a time. "I...believe in Yuuri's vision. The whole world at peace, solving things with words instead of wars. I thought it was crazy at first, but...I'm starting to really believe that it's possible, and better than how things were."

Murata nodded. "I remember lifetimes of war and lifetimes of peace, and the peace was always better. Of course, it tends to run in cycles, as people forget what war was like, and those with power get greedy, but I think it's a good thing to strive for. As long as more people keep buying into Shibuya's vision, we might see it come to pass and last through this lifetime. Longer, if the world should be so lucky."

* * *

Murata returned from a brief trip to the kitchens to collect something for a late dinner and was greeted by a more tidy scene. Wolfram opened the door, hair in some semblance of order and face clean and alert, though he was still in pajamas, and inside the room, Murata saw that the bed was made and a table with two chairs had been cleared. "I thought we could probably stand to eat at a table this time," Wolfram explained with a half-smile.

So they shared a third meal with a semblance of decorum, and they stayed at the table afterwards, discussing different foods they'd experienced before. They started trading brief descriptions of the more unusual dishes they'd tried, or at least unusual to the Demon Kingdom, and Murata suspected Wolfram didn't believe him about the fried squid, based on the pause and the followup of "Pickled weasel," and then they were off on the absurdities game again, trying to outdo each other with more and more implausible dishes within the realm of barely-believability.

Murata was running out of ideas, and he was in the middle of trying to think of an original type of sauce to put on a hypothetical dish of crow's feet when there was a knock on the door.

"Papa Wolfram? Can I come in?"

Wolfram swallowed, hope and fear flashing across his face, but he hesitated only a moment before he went to open the door.

"Hello, Greta."

"Hi, Papa." The girl stepped inside, holding what seemed to be a knitted yellow teddy bear – one of Gwendal's creations, probably.

"What are you doing here?" The question was far gentler than when he'd asked the same thing of Conrad, and Wolfram put a hand on her shoulder.

"Well, you weren't at lunch, and I asked where you were, and Uncle Conrad said you had other meal plans, and afterwards he told me you were having a sad day and I should come see you later, and when I'm sad, it helps to have a stuffed animal, so I went to see Uncle Gwendal and asked if I could have one to give to you, and he said he had something he thought would be appropriate, and he gave me this lion. So I brought it for you."

Wolfram managed a weak laugh, and he asked, "Gwendal?" Then he knelt and pulled the girl into an embrace. "Thank you, Greta. This makes me very happy."

"Papa, why were you sad?"

"I..." Wolfram was still for a moment. "Come sit with me." He led her to the bed and drew her up to sit beside him, legs hanging off the edge, and he left an arm around her. Murata wondered if he should leave, give them privacy for this discussion, but decided the distraction of his departure might worry the girl more – and he wasn't sure she'd even noticed his presence.

"Greta, your Papa Yuuri and I...We aren't going to be married, anymore."

"What? But...You're my papas."

"I know, Greta, but—"

"Why aren't you getting married?"

"I...it...we...realized it wouldn't be a good match. Yuuri and I...we're...too different."

"No you're not." Insistent, desperate.

"Yes..." Voice breaking, a clearing of the throat. "We are."

"But...you're supposed to get married and then you'll be my papa for real." Tears in her voice.

"I...Greta, I'll always think of you as my daughter, no matter what." Tears in his voice again, too. "I don't think this will change anything between us. I love you. I always will."

"I love you too, Papa." The last word defiant, challenging. Wolfram pulled her into his lap and held her.

"Will you still come and read to me?"

"Yes."

"And tuck me in sometimes?"

"Yes."

"And I'll get to see you every day?"

"Yes, unless I'm away on business, same as usual."

"...Okay." A sniffle. "You promise?"

"I promise."

"Good."

After a while, "Is Papa Yuuri sad, too?"

"...I don't know."

"Does he know you're sad?"

"I don't think so. But, you probably shouldn't tell him I've been sad, because then he would be sad. And I'm feeling better since you came to see me."

"...Okay."

They sat together for a time, another sniffle the only sound, and Murata studied the picture from behind, brown hair just visible over Wolfram's shoulder, blond head bowed so that his face would be against the top of her head. He thought briefly of other times and places, other parents and children, but kept coming back to himself watch this scene.

After a time, Wolfram stood and turned to lay her on the bed, gently – Murata saw that she'd fallen asleep. After a moment more of looking at her, stroking her hair, Wolfram moved away and approached Murata.

"Ken, I...thank you." Wolfram spoke in a low voice. "I don't think I could have gotten through that, this morning. Before...everything."

Murata smiled at him. "I hope you're feeling better about things," he answered softly.

"I...think I am. I mean, it's still...painful, but, at least I can imagine the future – it doesn't feel like the end of the world."

"I'm glad. Well, is this where I leave you to get some rest, or did you want to talk more? I'm here if you need me."

"I think I'll be all right, now." Wolfram glanced at Greta.

"Okay. I'll stop by for breakfast again, if you'd like?"

"Sure." A warm smile, and Murata found himself beaming back.

Later, in his own bed, drifting off, Murata thought about blond hair and green eyes. _Smitten, anyway. But leave it alone._


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning, when he arrived for breakfast as promised, he found a neatly dressed Wolfram and a cheerful Greta when the door opened.

"Ken-chan!"

Wolfram blinked, and mouthed, _Ken-chan?_ over Greta's head.

"Aha, good morning, Greta. It's good to see you."

"Good morning! Papa—" a slight but firm emphasis on the word, "Said we would have a guest, but he didn't say who."

"I see that you two are already well acquainted." Wry.

"He was at the ball..." The dress-up story came out as they sat down to eat, and Murata grinned at her, unabashed. He found Wolfram smiling with a faintly bemused expression that turned into a smirk when the story arrived at the invitation for Papa Yuuri to join in.

They let Greta steer the conversation through the meal. As they finished eating, she asked, "Papa, will you come to lunch today, with everyone?"

"I...All right." Wolfram looked uneasy, but he evidently had poor resistance to wide, well-loved eyes. "Do you have lessons you should be going to, now?"

"Yes, Papa."

"All right. Off with you, then. I'll see you later."

"Okay. Bye, Papa. Bye, Ken-chan!"

Murata waved at her as she left, and when he turned around, he found Wolfram smirking again. "Well, Ken-chan, I'm glad you came to join us."

Murata grinned back again. "You know, there's a time and a place for formality, but when someone is attaching a butterfly to your head, on top of a zoo that's already in place, that's really not it."

"I suppose not. Well, what are your plans for the day?"

"Vague. That's one thing about being the Sage, here, I can study as much history as I want at whatever pace I want, instead of having to study specified topics in specified time frames." Murata tilted his head. "How was your night?"

"Much better than the last."

"You going to be ok for lunch?"

"I...think so. Maybe. As long as he doesn't try to talk about it."

"Do you want me to talk to him? I should probably check in with him, anyway, Maou's advisor and all that."

"Um..."

"I won't tell him that you've been sad." Murata smiled crookedly.

"Hn. All right...If you want to."

Murata nodded, and he turned the conversation to small things for a while before leaving in search of the Maou.

* * *

"Murata! Hey, I was looking for you. Um...Have you talked to Wolfram at all, lately?"

"Yes."

"Really? Is...He's really mad, isn't he?"

Murata hesitated, thinking he should have planned out more words in advance before coming to Shibuya's office. "I wouldn't say that he's mad, exactly, but...I think he's going to feel a little awkward around you for a while."

"Oh...What can I do about it? I really...He's still my friend, I don't want him to feel awkward, or anything."

Murata smiled a little. "I don't think there's anything you can do, right now. Just give him a little time and space to adjust to the new situation."

Shibuya sighed. "If you're sure..."

"I'm sure. You'll see him at lunch, today, so just be civil."

"Oh! I...Okay. He's really not mad?"

"No, but you'd best not push him. I'd try to avoid the subject of the engagement in front of other people for the moment, if I were you."

"Right...Good idea."

"And it wouldn't hurt to talk to Greta, and maybe Wolfram later, about how it will affect their relationship."

"Oh! Oh no, I didn't think...Really, he's as much her father as I am, I don't...That won't change, will it? I mean, she looks up to him so much..."

"I don't think you need to worry about them changing how they feel, but it might reassure them if you let them know you aren't going to challenge it."

"Of course not. Damn. I should apologize. Again. But not at lunch?"

"Not at lunch."

"Alright. Thanks, Murata."

* * *

Murata's two-week stay turned into four when he gladly took Shibuya's hint that he wouldn't mind further advice until the Wolfram thing settled down. It was near the end of this extension, during one of the now-common afternoon tea sessions with Wolfram, that Murata hatched a new plan of action.

"So, how are you holding up, since it's been a little while?"

"Okay. Mostly. It's...still hard, guarding him. Being around him, like nothing's different. I keep...I keep having the urge to call him a cheater, or trot out one of the other old running jokes, but...obviously, I can't pretend they're appropriate, now, and they wouldn't make any sense anyway. And...well, the rest is about as hard as it was before."

"Hmm. Do you think it would help to spend some more time away from him, for a while?"

"I don't know. If I just avoid him, he'll get all paranoid that I'm mad at him, again, and I don't know if I can withstand too much questioning."

"What if you went somewhere else, out of the area?"

"What?"

"Travel somewhere, without him. For a little while."

"Like where? And why? I can't just up and leave...Greta would be furious if I just left with no good reason, and my brothers...I have responsibilities..."

"Well, we could make a good enough reason. I've been thinking, I'd kind of like to travel again, see what is the state of the country away from the castle, see what the rest of the world looks like. Memories of previous lives only do you so much good if they aren't full of experience. And the Sage needs to stay well-informed to do his job."

"And you...want me to go with you?"

"I'll admit it, I'm not skilled at defending myself, and I'm sure I couldn't so much as make the most cowardly bandit feel nervous. If I go, I'd like to have someone along I can trust, and a friend I can talk to is even better."

Wolfram smiled, then looked thoughtful. "Well...maybe. You aren't just making up this excuse for my benefit, are you?"

"No, it's something I've been thinking about for a little while. I need to be out of the temple, and I would like to travel. Of course, you needn't feel obligated. I won't be hurt if you turn me down."

"Let me think about it."


	7. Chapter 7

In the end, Wolfram acquiesced, and they began to travel together from place to place, Murata borrowing from previous lives to remember how to ride a horse properly. He congratulated himself on the idea from time to time, as Wolfram grew caught up in the spirit of exploration, and they shared long, rambling conversations or companionable silence on the road, and they began to engage the common rooms of the inns they stayed at with banter and their absurdities game, now a staple of their days. He'd never seen Wolfram so agreeably friendly toward strangers, before, and he was encouraged by the change.

He resolutely maintained an attitude of strict friendship, prepared to finish the journey and more without pushing more of his own attention on his friend than would be welcome.

Then, a few weeks into their travels, as they were beginning to circle around and head back towards home, Murata began to notice Wolfram withdrawing a little, especially when they headed upstairs in an inn to share the usual two-bed room. The absence of the previous sleepy banter they'd established, and of the occasional sharing of secrets beforehand, began to worry him, and he decided to try to head off trouble.

He started in on the task shortly after they entered tonight's room and began settling in.

"So, are you going to spill, or what?" Murata asked, eyes and hands focused on untying a boot, as they sat opposite each other on their respective beds.

"What?"

"You've been moody for days. What's eating you?"

Silence. Not nothing, then. Murata waited. Took off the other boot.

"It's...I can't stop...I think it really got to me. Yuuri's...attitude." A bit of anger, punctuated by a boot hitting the floor. Then stillness.

"In what way?" Murata asked softly.

"It's stupid. But after he said...things...so many times..." Wolfram crossed his arms stiffly and glared at the ceiling. "Every time I so much as look at a man and think he's attractive, I feel guilty about it."

Murata blinked, and then came a surge of anger and compassion. "Wolfram," he said, standing and taking a step towards his friend with thoughts of a hand on the shoulder, forcing eye contact and convincing him no, you're fine, it's okay, don't let him keep on hurting you – and then he stopped, abruptly changing tactics as another notion struck him. In an altogether different, teasing tone, he put a hand on his hip, tilted his head, and asked, "Who are these attractive men you've been looking at?"

Wolfram colored slightly, and his gaze slid from the ceiling to the corner of the room, carefully avoiding looking back at him.

"You...Oh." _Oh._ "Um..."

"Never mind, it's not important."

"Wolfram..."

"It's...I...You...I'm not really very appealing relationship material right now anyway, really. So it doesn't matter."

Murata stood still, unsure whether it was a better idea to approach or withdraw, Sage's memories no help in making a timely and appropriate response. It was the glance at his face, green eyes flashing up for a moment before turning away, that decided him. He walked forward and sat next to his friend, not quite touching.

"Wolfram..." He studied his friend's profile for a moment, feeling the trickle of alarm sinking down his spine, through his chest, the exuberant panic of working up the nerve to express feelings without certainty of how they would be received for the first time in his life, and the part of him that was the Sage laughed silently, because some things were always the same.

Finally, he compromised with himself on a plan of approach.

"If you want the Sage's advice, he would say, it might be a good idea to take more time, to wait until your heart is healed, less confused. That something you feel now might very well be a backlash from the rest, an understandable desire for a...tangible sign of affection, and that one should be prepared not to read too much into it."

Wolfram nodded once, silent.

"On the other hand...if you don't tell me to get the hell back over to my side of the room, you're likely to get Ken Murata, who is young and probably foolish and has been looking at an attractive man for weeks, trying very hard to be sensible and respectful, but I can't guarantee his proper conduct at this point in time."

A stillness.

Slowly, green eyes turning to meet his. A long moment of regard, and then a hand came up, hesitantly, lit on his back, electric, slid to his shoulder, pulled him closer. He mirrored the gesture, feeling alive and very much present until after they finished the slow lean in and their lips met, which sparked off the memories of a hundred first kisses, and Murata broke away, dizzy.

"Ken?" Uncertain, waiting.

"Sorry, memories playing tricks on me. Could I...possibly have another?"

Brilliant wide eyes, a sudden smile, and fulfillment of the request.

A while later, they lay together on the narrow bed, fingers tangled in hair and clothes, nose to nose, breathing deeply, shy to continue.

"Ken?"

"Mm?"

A search for words. Another kiss, instead.

Murata smiled. "I agree."

Smile returned. Then, "Is it okay – do you mind if we just...stay like this, tonight?"

Murata made a show of considering. "Mm. I think we should use a blanket, maybe. You're warm, but I don't know if you're that warm. It is getting on towards winter, you know."

"Mm hmm." Smiling, humorous.

"And we should probably put out the lamp."

"Mm."

"And maybe take your other boot off."

A few moments later, as Wolfram reached for the lamp, Murata pulled him back and used a hand to draw the green eyes back to his, and he studied his friend's face, smiling.

"What is it?" Smiling back.

"It's just...amazingly good to see you happy."

The smile grew wider, and he felt filled by it, impossible that there should be anything in life better than this.


	8. Chapter 8

The next day, after an hour on the road spent smiling so often he felt his face might cramp up, Murata invented a blatantly flimsy excuse about his horse looking tired to suggest that they ride double for a while. Chest pressed to back, arms snug around the waist, smiling into the shoulder from behind. Definitely a good idea.

After a little while, he thought to ask, "Are you feeling better, now? About looking at men?"

"Hmm. Yes."

"Good."

A brisk breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees around them, and Murata was glad of the extra warmth next to him and the sunshine that lit up the golden hair brushing his face.

"Ken?"

"Yes?"

"Are you...Do...do you mind that we didn't...go farther? Last night?"

Murata blinked. "No. Why?"

"I just wondered. Um. It seemed like you might...have more experience, and..."

"...And be so experienced and worldly that I'd scoff at a mere first kiss?"

"Um."

"Well, I told you, you're getting Ken Murata. And he's never been in any kind of serious relationship before at all. I mean, he jokes about shrine maidens and all, but that's pretty much all talk. So, this is all new and exciting to him."

"Can you really separate yourself like that? Um...What did you mean about memories playing tricks?"

"Oh. Sorry, that probably does deserve a better explanation. Well, a lot of the time, if I want to know anything at all from the past, I have to make a conscious effort to remember it, maybe think, 'Have I ever seen anything like this?' or 'Did I ever learn about that?' It's...a different mindset to remember things in this lifetime than it is to remember things from other ones. Mostly.

"Except sometimes there are triggers, when something seems extremely similar to significant things from one of those past lives, like...if I suddenly come to a familiar place for the first time, say, a small temple where I remember having a wedding, then for a moment I'll find myself reliving that past moment.

"It was the same thing last night, only, it's...well, um. I guess it's just that the trigger was the emotions, and the newness, and then that first – well. Anyway, I guess I've always found that to be pretty intense when I'm young, because I got a lot of memories all at once, other first kisses, all of these scenes overlapping together. That almost never...well, I'm pretty sure it's never happened to Ken Murata, before. I'm not quite sure if I want it to happen again."

Murata fell silent for a moment, then asked softly, "Does it bother you?"

Hesitation. "I guess I'm still getting used to the idea." Pause. "What if I do something that triggers a memory, and you...like the memory better?"

"Well...I don't think that's very likely. If it's off of an emotional trigger, then at most, I'd think I'd like the memory just the same, and then when I stop remembering and you're still here, well, there's no contest."

"And what if it's not?"

"...Then I get over it and get on with living in the present, or I turn into a lonely old man before I've grown to my full height. Which, by the way, I think I was approaching, before I found you."

An arm came up to cover one of his, fingers searching, entwining. "I apologize. I shouldn't be mad about something you can't control."

A tension he hadn't noticed building began to ease from his shoulders. He squeezed the thumb that had settled under his own, gratefully.

Now, Murata found that the blind fog of joy had cleared enough to let him think of the future – he felt both amused and wistful at this observation, but he decided to make the best of it.

"About your other question. Will you tell me what your own thoughts are, regarding...going further?"

"...I don't want to end up like Mother. She...she throws herself at every man she meets, and most of the ones who respond to it...I don't like them very much." Wolfram spoke quietly, and Murata had to focus intently to hear it over the sounds of the breeze. Then a touch of anger brought up the volume slightly. "They don't respect her. And...it was hard as a child, too. There was one man, after my father was gone, who stayed for a while, I don't know how long, but I got used to seeing him around, and he brought gifts for me, and they told me he might be my new father soon. And then he left, and each time a new man came after that for a while, I kept thinking, maybe this one is going to be my father, and hoping, because the way they'd talked about it, it seemed like it would be really wonderful if I could have a new father. But they kept leaving after not very long, and...Anyway, I don't want to end up like that. So, I don't want to rush into...that, as soon as there's...attraction."

"I understand."

"You really don't mind?"

"I really don't mind. This part's fun too, and, well, I'd rather not skip over it. I don't think you can go back and experience it the same way later. Honestly, if you'd just told me that you liked me, I'd have been ridiculously happy for a week off of that."

A laugh. Murata smiled to hear it, and continued speculatively, "Every time I go looking through old-person memories, I keep finding this idea popping up, 'Don't grow up too fast, enjoy being young while you can.' Apparently, somewhere along the way, I decided to start leaving messages for my future selves by thinking about them really hard and hoping I'll stumble across the memory of those thoughts before it's no longer relevant."

Another laugh, and Wolfram said, "I think my horse is looking tired now, too."

"Oh?"

"We'd better switch to the other one for a while. It's your horse, so you can sit in front and steer it."

"Oh! Well, if you think that's best, by all means."


	9. Chapter 9

They advanced together until unfamiliar territory turned into familiar, and when they arrived home at last, Murata quietly moved his things into Wolfram's room.

No crises awaited their arrival, and they fell back into a peaceful routine of enabling and helping Shibuya to run the country. Murata studied Wolfram around Shibuya, mostly successfully squelched jealousy when they both managed to smile at each other, and was glad to see that the pain seemed to have eased away.

It seemed as if Shibuya's peace had taken hold of the world, until late in the evening Gwendal was due to return from a simple visit to a neighboring country.

"Wolfram! Come quick! It's oh..." The door to their room crashed open and Shibuya's voice intruded. Murata went still, and Wolfram froze staring up at him. "U-um..."

Murata recovered after a moment, sitting up and sliding the unbuttoned shirt back up over a bare shoulder, and he smiled faintly at the Maou's now-scarlet face. "Really, Shibuya, you shouldn't barge into people's rooms without knocking, if you aren't prepared for what you might find."

Wolfram coughed and sat up, turning away from the door to begin redoing his own buttons. "What, Yuuri."

"I...it's Gwendal. Giesela sent me to bring you, she needs more people to help heal."

"What!" Wolfram twisted around with a sharp look, then scrambled to stand up. "The infirmary?"

"Yeah."

Wolfram dashed out the door, followed closely by Shibuya and then Murata, who arrived several breaths behind the more athletic pair.

"Good. Poison arrow through the lung, tip broken off inside." Giesela spoke in a steady, authoritative tone. "I'm keeping him stable so far, but I can't fix all three problems by myself. You two need to help."

"I...I'm not very good at this, yet," Shibuya said, anxiously.

"I've never been good at it," Wolfram added, voice strained.

"All I need you to do is call up your healing maryoku, and put your hands on him near the wound, around mine. Don't press down, just touch. If you can, focus on making those areas healthier – they're going to be the hardest hit from the injury and the poison so far, and when I need to, I'll draw on your power and direct it."

"Murata, can you help, too?" The question came from Shibuya, but it was Wolfram's face that drew him to stand next to Giesela, Wolfram shocked and fearful at the sight of his stoic eldest brother lying bloody and unconscious and pale and vulnerable.

He touched lightly at the appropriate memories to gather information. A similar case, poisoned knife in the lower back. Working as a team, one to heal the wound, one to draw out the poison, because for one person to try to focus on both was like trying to swordfight with one hand and write poetry with the other at the same time. Even if she was the best healer alive – and Murata had no idea of the extent of Giesela's abilities – the best she could do would be to switch quickly from one job to another and hope not to lose too much ground in the neglected area. Then, if this difficult task was accomplished, the moments of inattention would leave the patient in much worse shape overall, more tissue damaged by poison, more blood lost, more shock set in, and it might be beyond her limits to continue through this. And Gwendal looked to be on the brink of death already.

So, steeling himself with another look at Wolfram's face, he sighed and embraced the memories of the healer he had been. Put aside Ken, push away the memories of other times that he'd borrowed these skills and what came after. Remember what it was like to learn how to heal, what it was like to know how to heal, to be a competent healer. Embrace the skills born of study and learning that could react to any new battlefield's creation. Embrace Merian.

She looked down at the body in front of her, assessed the situation. An unfamiliar companion stood by her, but she saw the complex flow of the other's maryoku, stabilizing, but fighting a losing battle alone. "I will draw the poison, you see to the wound," she said. She felt the other woman look at her sharply, but she ignored it and drew on her own maryoku, sliding it under the patterns already in place, taking over lines of power like a game of cat's cradle and gently aligning them to use her own power as their source without interrupting the flow. And then she began to find and pull, rather than hold in place. Find the poison, pull it back out. Coax the spark of life back into the tissue left behind. Find and pull. Draw it back out of the wound, bring it out the way it came, simpler and safer than anywhere else, given the other healing focused there.

"I'm going to take the arrowhead out," said the woman next to her. That was a complex job, using a burst of power to keep the wound stable while reaching inside with a physical tool to remove an object, but she held her peace. Got to let even the new ones do their job, or you'll never get experts. Best to trust, keep to the part she'd taken on.

"I'm going to close the wound, now," announced the other.

"Keep a vent open and hold it for a bit, will you, dear?"

"I – yes."

She paused the process, holding most of the remaining poison where it was throughout the body, and focusing instead on the area around the wound, pulling every bit of the stuff out of the way so that the edges of the torn tissue could close and grow back together unhindered, working now on pulling it out of the lung, a comparatively huge puddle of it against the tiny dispersion elsewhere, encouraging the body to help her, spit it out, throw it out, and she gathered it up and pulled it out of the lung.

"Lung's ready, just leave the skin now," she said.

"Yeah."

She directed the contaminant out of the last slit in the flesh, getting close now. Let her partner clean it off as it came out, the wound stabilization wasn't the hard part anymore.

Finally the job was done. "Go ahead and close it up, dear." She withdrew her own power carefully, slowly, make sure she hadn't missed anything, watch for signs of sudden worsening. Nothing, everything as it should be. The body would take time and energy to finish healing, and care should be taken to keep the wound from breaking open again, but he should live. "Good. Is that all for today?"

"Y-yes."

She nodded and stepped away from the table, satisfied.

Fire or healing, it had been an easy choice which skill to develop in her youth, and she'd never looked back. Restore, preserve life, not destroy. Although, now that she had leisure to unfocus and think her own thoughts, there was something about fire that she should remember—

_Not yet._

She swayed and heard a familiar voice calling his name. "Ken?"

"Leave. Need to...leave."

Dimly, she felt hands, was conscious of his feet moving. "Baths."

"What?"

There was something, a void of thought, something too big or too small to see, but she needed to—

_Not yet._ "Now." _Not yet._

Go around the void, see—

_Not yet. Not yet not yet._

Here was water. He stared at it, focused hard. "Stay back. Try...get me out...if...drown. Stay back!" He pushed a hand away, ignored voices, stumbled toward the water, half-slid and half-fell in. Head above water, good enough.

_Okay. _

And then she remembered. Her children. Her children, tormented, tortured, dead. Dead. Nothing her healing could do but tell her exactly what they'd suffered before they died. And all of it done for spite – for the amusement of that man – the man whose soldiers, whose own children, she'd spent the day healing, while he made threats and promises about her children, and all along he planned to give them back dead, broken to break her.

And she remembered fire.

_No._

_Yes! Destroy them!_

_They're not here. Not now. Not you. We're..._

She gathered her power. Let it build—

_No! Burn us out. Not enough power left for this._

_Don't care. Give it all. Nothing left. End it. End them._

Added more – a wrenching, he stopped the flow before she was ready, it wouldn't be enough to destroy the camp, make them all dead – but it was okay, that wasn't here and now, it was past and done and _not me. Let go_—

There was a loud noise, and he found himself falling, and then water over him, hot – breathing didn't work right – hands, different noise, faintly. Wolfram. And now he was coughing, gasping, lying on his face, expelling water, and he heard Wolfram shouting at him, and that was good, because it meant everything would turn out all right.

And then something soothing, washing through him, easing aching lungs and too-hot skin, and he gasped in relief.

"He should be all right, now. As far as the outside goes. I don't know what you did, Your Eminence, but I don't think I'll ask you to do it again any time soon."

"Thank you, Giesela," he tried, and was gratified to find that his voice worked. Someone was helping him sit up, Wolfram, and Giesela knelt next to him, looking at him expressionlessly.

"Are you done with...whatever else it is you're going to do to yourself?"

He managed a wan smile. "I think the fire control stage is over with, yes."

"All right. We'll talk later, if you don't mind. Wolfram, can you get him to bed?"

"Yeah."

"He'll need rest, but other than that, he seems to be healthy now. Let me know if anything else happens."

"Right."

Murata found himself with one arm over each of Wolfram and Shibuya, half walking, half carried back to their room. Then he stood leaning against a bedpost, sent Shibuya away, and let Wolfram help him get into dry pajamas.

"Care to tell me what exactly that was?" Clipped words, angry tone.

"I...unn."

"You shouldn't have done something so dangerous." Gentle hands offset the angry tone, and Murata let himself be guided into the bed, under the covers. "There's people's safety to consider." Arms surrounding him, pulling him close. He realized vaguely that he was starting to shake, and he stared at the ceiling.

"Ken, say something." The anger was replaced by concern.

Murata opened his mouth, shut it. Swallowed.

"Are you okay? Should I—"

"Yes," he managed, focusing with immense effort. "I'm fine. Sort of. Well, I will be. I think." He took a deep, shuddering breath.

"What did you _do_?" Quiet, emotional. He didn't answer, finding thinking difficult, intimidating, much less speaking.

"Ken..." Green eyes entering his field of view. "Ken, you're scaring me."

Murata's eyes focused on the anxious gaze. Should do something about that. "Sorry," he said distantly. "Love you."

And then suddenly he could feel again, Ken Murata with another's memories fresh in his mind, like a terrible scene in a movie except that he could remember the feel of the emptiness, the grief too big to hold onto, the rage. He inhaled sharply, then with a soft wail launched into weeping, huge jolting sobs, and then words came interspersed, haphazardly. "She just...What they did to her _children_...I don't understand...how anyone could..._do_ something like that..."

Brokenly, he told Merian's story, starting at the end and going backwards – how she'd used all of her energy to create a firestorm in her captor's camp, aiming to destroy him and those who followed him, after he'd shown her the mangled bodies of her children, after he'd lied about her children's safety to trick her into serving him, even while he knew what was already happening to them on his own orders. No possible reason for it except that she was a demon and he was a monster that called himself human.

Then he let go of words, pressed his face against Wolfram, brought an arm up to hold onto him, and let the grief, which Merian had never had time to embrace and express, pour out and dampen Wolfram's shoulder. He felt a hand stroking his hair and clung to the comfort of it to anchor him, to help him let go of the past and drift back towards the present.

After a time, he calmed enough to find a bit of wry humor in his mix of emotions, and he smiled crookedly through the lingering tears. "Well, that's why I try not to heal very often, if you were wondering."

"You...Why? Why do it now? Giesela could have..."

Murata lifted his head to look at Wolfram. Talking now, explaining, helped distract, and the tears mostly faded. "Giesela _might_ have. But probably not. Dealing with poison that's already spread out through the body and dealing with a wound like that, with the arrowhead...It's not something one person can do all at once. He'd have slipped into worse condition from whatever aspect she stopped paying attention to, and...well, that's the sort of thing a healer burns herself out trying to do."

"But...This was dangerous for you, wasn't it?"

"A little. I...may have underestimated the aftereffect slightly."

"If you'd...I couldn't..."

He smiled gently at Wolfram and said, "I couldn't have forgiven myself if I'd let your older brother die when this is all it would have cost me to save him."

Now Wolfram was the one crying, and Murata held him, fresh supply of tears building in his own eyes but breath still coming calmly.

Later, when they were both still, and Murata was focusing on the sound of their breathing, Wolfram asked, "Will you tell me what you did?"

"Ah. Well, I think I've told you how normally, when I access memories of past lives, there's some distance to it, it happened to somebody else, not me, and I just get to watch. That's always how it happens, except sometimes when there's a strong trigger, like I told you about, and then sometimes it's more like I'm there, reliving the memory, but only a moment, one scene, and it's over, I'm back in the present. But the first way is what I used to assess, remembered a similar injury with poison and bad injury combined and what it had meant.

"But, remembering things that happened...that's good for general knowledge, but it doesn't help when I want to use a complex skill, something I knew how to do well in a previous life. I can't pick up all the pieces of knowledge and put them together myself – Ken Murata hasn't been trained for that. If I want to know how to heal a new injury, I need to go deeper, I have to remember what it was like to _be_ her. It's like I move far enough away from the present into her memories that I can remember everything she can remember, including all of her training and experience, and then I can look at an injury and say, right, this is how to heal that, so let's do it.

"Unfortunately, the life of the greatest healer I've ever been ended in..._that_, and when I've gone that deep, once whatever I was focusing on is taken care of, I can't pull back easily, and I end up remembering whatever else happened in that person's life that was the most significant, and with Merian...well, that's when I try to blow something up, and then I'm a mess for a while afterwards."

"That...You could have warned us! When you...that cloud of steam, we couldn't see, and then for a second I thought you were just _gone_, before we looked under the water..."

"Sorry." He ran his fingers through golden hair, embracing the good kind of fire. "Sorry. All I was thinking was that I couldn't think about what would happen after, or I might lose my nerve."

"Have you done this before?"

"No. Not Ken. A couple other lives. Well, I did something like it, to feed power to Shibuya once, but I didn't have to go as deep, and that life only had memories of war, and it...well, I didn't sleep well that night, that's all, really."

Quiet, breathing together. Then Wolfram said, "Be careful about this sort of thing, okay? I..." Hands tightened on shoulder, in hair. "I love you."

Murata felt a kind of unexpected relief wash through him, clearing the way for a weary joy to settle in with the lingering sorrow. "Thank you. I...I'm glad you're not...scared away." The blond head shook "no," green eyes emotional, and then there was a kiss, and Murata remembered to add, "I love you too," and then he let himself be drawn fully into the present by warm mouth, warm hands, a sudden longing for affirmation of life after coming within view of death..


	10. Chapter 10

Murata woke late the next morning and found Wolfram's face framed in sunlight, looking down at him, and the first thing that he remembered from the previous day was _Love. _He smiled.

"How are you feeling?"

Smile receded as the question sparked memories and a pang of loss, as if it was his own personal tragedy from the distant past – perhaps it was. He made an effort to focus on love, again, and while the sorrow didn't disappear, it was balanced out: cycle of life, pain and joy.

"Okay." He reached out and pulled Wolfram to him, wanting to be held, wanting the gentle reminder of it to keep him here in the present. Wolfram obliged, and Murata sighed, relaxing again.

"So I was thinking. Do you always have the same level and type of abilities with maryoku? I mean...if you had no potential for healing, as yourself, would you have been able to do that?"

"Well...No, I don't think so. It's still me, in the same body, just using a different person's memories. Why?"

"Well, that has to mean that you have potential to be a pretty strong healer, right? Or fire wielder, for that matter. So...you could study it from the beginning, as Ken Murata."

"...I guess I could, technically. I've just been focused on my role as advisor, and the memories are there if I really need them." He left unsaid that the idea made him uneasy, especially since he'd invoked Merian's memories in this lifetime already – he wasn't sure if he cared to be reminded of her story on a regular basis by learning the same things she'd learned.

"Well, you could do both. And then we just have to make sure you live happily to old age and die peacefully in bed, and next time around you don't have to draw on those old memories."

"I'll think about it." Murata smiled.

After a time, quiet, with sunlight from the window creeping over them, Murata sat up and stretched, feeling tired but functional. "I suppose we should get up before we miss lunch, too, and someone comes looking for us."

Wolfram didn't move, and Murata looked down to see him with eyes shut and a pained expression across his face.

"What is it?"

"I can't believe Yuuri...just...without knocking..."

Murata stared at him for a minute, then started laughing softly.

"It's not funny! He's going to...it's going to be so...And he's going to be there at lunch!"

"Well, there are worse times he could have walked in, you know."

Wolfram was blushing, now. "Thank Shinou for small mercies." Murata blinked, thrown as always when someone spoke of the man as some kind of deity, though it was a habit ingrained in this society for centuries. Powerful, yes, but he'd still been a person with his own faults and weaknesses. "But, he...Are you sure we have to go to lunch?"

"Well, aside from reassuring people that I'm fine and hearing the news, I'd like to eat today."

Wolfram sighed, but he stirred and got up to face the day as well.

* * *

Lunch began with inquiries about Gwendal's health (fine) and Murata's (also fine). Murata explained his healing and subsequent breakdown in loose terms, leaving the description of Merian's story as "bad memories." Conrad shared that Gwendal's injury had been acquired courtesy of a group of bandits armed with hojitsu during his return, thanks to a lucky shot, and while there was a healer traveling with the group who was able to keep Gwendal alive until they reached the castle, the man passed out upon arrival. A force had been sent back out to find and deal with the remaining bandits, who'd fled when their initial ambush earned them a counterattack that dropped six of their number.

Important news and reassurances out of the way, Murata relaxed, and he casually glanced at Wolfram next to him and Shibuya across from him, noting with slight amusement that they were avoiding looking at or speaking to each other, and Shibuya seemed particularly determined to focus on his food and on his side of the table. He thought about teasing one or both of them, but he decided that would probably get him set on fire in either case, so he held his peace.

* * *

Unfortunately, he found that Shibuya's discomfort around both of them persisted for several days, and their king began avoiding both of them as much as was possible, hurriedly striking up conversations with Greta or Conrad when Murata and Wolfram arrived at mealtimes and making excuses to go somewhere else when he encountered Murata unexpectedly.

Beginning to be concerned and a little irritated, he cornered Shibuya one afternoon in his office.

"Shibuya."

"Oh, ahh, hey Murata. I was just about done here, I think I'm late for meeting with—"

"Shibuya. Sit down."

Shibuya was still a moment, then complied quietly, never making eye contact. Murata pulled over a nearby chair and sat down across the desk from him.

"Shibuya, I'm here as your advisor. But I can't advise you if you refuse to speak to me."

"I..." He fell silent again, evidently out of words already.

"I'm your friend. So is Wolfram. It would be nice if you could remember that instead of treating us like we're not there."

"Sorry...It's..."

"And you've said yourself that you're fine with other people having same-gender relationships. I'm sorry if it's hard to realize it applies to someone you know, but—"

"It's not that! It's just..." Shibuya sighed and leaned forward to put elbows on his desk, head in his hands. "It's just that he...if he thinks _you're_ attractive, with the whole double-black thing, he might have thought _I_ was attractive, and...I mean, I really thought he didn't...he wasn't...Were all those things he used to say _true_? I thought he was just joking! I thought he felt the same way I did, and I wanted to reassure him that I didn't feel any different, but if he really...had feelings for me, then...I am the world's biggest jerk. The things I said to him...ugh. And the way I treated him...Murata, I don't know how to face him. I don't know how to make an apology big enough for this."

Murata stared for a moment, slightly dazed after the outburst, then forced himself into the role of advisor and focused. "You could start by just telling him what you just told me."

"That doesn't seem like enough..."

"Well, if you overdo it, he might start thinking you want him back. I'd sort of appreciate it if you don't overdo it." Murata winced reflexively at breaking his Impartial Advice rule, then decided maybe he should be participating in this conversation as Ken Murata, anyway.

"Hah..." Shibuya sighed. "Well, you're right. I can't keep avoiding both of you and pretending the issue doesn't exist. I guess I should go try to apologize. If you see me wearing a hat tomorrow, it's probably because he set my hair on fire. And I probably deserve it."

Murata smiled faintly as Shibuya stood and started for the door. As usual, once Shibuya decided on a course of action, he went to carry it out as quickly as possible. "Good luck."

He heard the door open, and before it shut, "Thanks, Murata, and I'm sorry for how I acted to you, too. I guess I am a wimp."

Murata remained seated for a few moments longer, left to himself to wonder about double-black appearances and how much he and Shibuya resembled each other in the eyes of natives of this world.

* * *

That night, he found Wolfram sitting near the window with a slightly dazed expression. "And how was your day?" Murata asked him with a hint of a smile.

Wolfram looked up at him, wide-eyed. "He...I...He apologized! For...Did you talk to him?"

"A little, but he figured it out on his own. Finally. Did you set his hair on fire?"

Wolfram blinked and smiled, still looking faintly astonished. "No. Do you think I should have?"

"Well, that's what he expected." Murata felt an impulse to touch his companion, the hair, the face, but he sat down nearby, instead. "So how are you feeling?"

"I...I don't know. I just, I can't believe he actually realized, and he's not mad – he _apologized_."

"So now are you going to go chasing after him again?" Murata deliberately kept his tone light, teasing.

Wolfram finally focused, meeting his eyes with a wry twist of the mouth. "Not likely."

Murata smiled, trying to pass off the relief he felt as amusement. Wolfram seemed to feel that more reassurance was appropriate, however, and came over to him, pulled him to his feet, into a loose embrace, leaned back to maintain eye contact. "My loyalties in that regard lie elsewhere these days. There was only ever one of us in that engagement who had the personality of a cheater, after all."

Murata let the reassurance warm someplace inside of him, and they put conversation to rest for the night.


	11. Chapter 11

In spite of what should have been a resolution to the matter, Murata found that doubts had taken root and couldn't be shaken loose so easily.

It was a week after the Apology, as Murata had begun to capitalize it in his mind. He sat curled up on the window ledge, pretending to read, and brooding instead.

He looked up as Wolfram approached and stepped into full morning sunlight. The sight sent him back into another memory of Shinou, a morning of extraordinary peace, no desperate, urgent plans for the day, for once, just the luxury to watch the face of the man he loved lit up by the sun, full of joy and pride in what they'd accomplished.

Then Murata blinked, coming back to himself, and watched Wolfram instead. Green eyes, now, looking back at him.

These moments of memory sparked by Wolfram's appearance were far less frequent than they once were, Murata mused. Since he'd started living properly in the present again, coming to know Wolfram, embracing happiness with the person here and now, he'd tended to stay properly in the present. And while Wolfram still resembled Shinou, it was becoming easier to see the differences between them – the eyes, not only a different color, but wider, expressive in subtly different ways; the speech patterns and voices drastically different. Both of them could be impulsive, but Wolfram was more likely to say what came to mind, and Shinou couldn't have matched Wolfram's deadpan humor.

But Murata didn't care to compare them too closely – they were both worthwhile people, but he'd take the one who was present now, hands down.

"So are you going to spill, or what?"

"What?" Murata blinked again.

"You've been moody all week. And you haven't turned the page in twenty minutes. What are you thinking about?" Wolfram gestured vaguely at his book and pulled up a chair to sit close by.

"Um, nothing really important."

"I didn't say it had to be important. You can tell me anyway."

"I've been contemplating what color ribbons to give to the horses."

"For them to wear?"

"That's right, they look so drab, and miserable about it. I thought it would make them feel better."

"Mmhmm. What else?"

"Maybe some bells."

"What else have you thinking about?"

"Helping Anissina brainstorm about new inventions she could make."

"Don't even joke about that!"

"No, really. On Earth, they have these little propeller hats, it's really just a novelty, but if she made a device modeled on it, people could put it on their heads and be lifted off the ground, maybe fly around with it."

"That may be the most terrifying thing I've ever heard you say."

"Well, you did ask."

Wolfram smiled, then said, a little more firmly, "Okay, so I did. Now, seriously, what's bothering you?"

Murata shook his head and studied the glass of the window. "It's really nothing."

"Then what's the problem with telling me? Don't be a wimp."

The word jabbed at his worries and broke something loose. "Do I remind you of Yuuri?"

"What..." Wolfram broke off and fell still.

"It's not really...It's..." Murata stopped and sighed. Too late to pull it back now. "Well, it would be understandable. I mean, you still love him, don't you? And although on Earth, to other Japanese people, we don't look very similar, here, we're both double-black, and about the same age, too, so..." Wolfram's lack of response left him rambling nervously. "And then it was so soon after...I mean, I knew it had potential to just be a rebound kind of thing, I just didn't think about appearances then..." He shut off his mouth, trying not to feel, just wait, just be, and see.

"And who do you see when you look at me?" Not shouting, but hard, an edge of anger in the words.

"What?"

"A minute ago, when I came over to the window and you looked up, you did that thing where you look all unfocused and then you blink. You always do that when you're having one of those memories. So who were you seeing?"

"It's not relevant to the present."

"Like hell it's not."

"It doesn't matter."

"Like it doesn't matter to you whether I think you look like Yuuri?"

"I...someone from a long time ago. It really doesn't matter. A memory, a ghost, can't compete—"

"Who?"

Murata hesitated, then said softly, "You look a good deal like Shinou."

A silence, and then the edge of anger sharpened, grew colder. "You know, I was possessed by Shinou, once."

Murata stared at the wall.

"And then he killed me, or close enough."

Murata felt the words cut into him and leave him in turmoil. He wanted to apologize, to not belittle the misuse of Wolfram's person by excusing what had been done to him. But to say that he wished things had been different – he had believed in the plan, he still believed it was the best way, the only way, and he refused to belittle Shinou's sacrifice.

He sat struggling to find any decent response, silent, and then he heard Wolfram stand up. "I'm leaving. Don't look for me."

Murata looked up, watched Wolfram's figure depart from the sunlight, depart from the room. He abandoned the book on the window ledge and went to sit in the armchair with no line of sight to the window. Sunlight seemed absurd at the moment.


	12. Chapter 12

He brooded with increasing fervor as the day wore on, sinking into guilt and sorrow and loss, and he fell asleep alone on the edge of the bed on top of the covers. He woke in the middle of the night and felt a momentary pang of relief to find Wolfram present, which turned into a kind of desperate amusement at finding him held up from falling on the floor only because he was wrapped up in the blankets on his side of the bed, and Murata was anchoring the other end by laying on it. Only his head and one arm seemed to be properly on the bed. Murata smiled crookedly; he'd found that Wolfram would tend to hold still through the night as long as he was held, but left to himself he was an absurdly restless sleeper. He wondered what Shibuya had made of that – and then slid back into anxiety and sorrow until he fell back asleep, much later.

When he woke, Wolfram was gone again, and Murata decided that one day ought to be enough of accomplishing nothing, so he picked up his book, failed to progress through it for half an hour, then gave up and left the room to wander through the castle. He stopped by the kitchens for something to eat; he'd taken meals in Wolfram's room yesterday and still didn't feel like eating in prolonged company. Today, he went to eat by the fountain and stubbornly enjoyed the sunshine, though he relied more on his coat for warmth than the sun at this time of year.

Then, not sure he would make any progress but at a loss for what else to do with himself and not wanting to return to the room, he headed for the library.

Unexpectedly, he found Wolfram there, seated at a table, slouched and resting his head in his hands.

Murata hesitated, walked over, seated himself two chairs away. He stared through the table and waited for acknowledgement, if it came.

"I don't know why I came here." Murata couldn't quite identify the edge in Wolfram's voice this time – anger? bitterness? He waited to see if more was forthcoming.

"I understand that Shinou's soul had been corrupted, but now it's better, and he's still there, in the temple, right?" Low, unsteady. "So if he wanted, he could possess someone again. And...then if you wanted to, you could have him back, looking pretty much like himself."

Murata stopped breathing, then stood up abruptly, chair moving back with a too-loud noise, and he stumbled over the leg of it, disturbed another chair by grabbing it to keep his balance, and lurched over to grab hold of Wolfram's shoulder, leaned against the table and grabbed his other shoulder, peered into his face. "Don't you _ever_ think that," he said, shaken. "Even if...even if I wasn't already in love with you, even if I didn't know you, I would never – _he _would never do anything like that, and if he did, I couldn't be in love with him anyway."

"I...I'm not really anything special, and he's the Great One. So..."

"Stop." Murata slid himself into Wolfram's lap, pressed his forehead against Wolfram's neck. "Stop. You...I can't believe you. I'm never leaving you alone for a whole day after a fight again, if this is the kind of nonsense you come up with. You. I love you, the Wolfram who will humor me about horse ribbons, who will bluff with me about stinkbugs, who I have to pin down if I want to keep all my teeth through the night. I can remember being in love with him, but it doesn't matter, because I love you now, and you're here, and you're alive and you're light and life and fire and, and I don't even care if you end up not feeling the same way once you get over Shibuya. I'm going to take however much time I have with you, even if it's only ten more seconds, and I'm going to enjoy it, and I'm going to remember it forever and value it every bit as much as any other memory. And more than that, for as long as I'm Ken Murata."

He felt Wolfram shaking, felt him swallow, felt arms come up to hold onto him.

"I'm sorry, Ken." A whisper. Then a low voice, quiet, "I'm sorry I made stupid assumptions, and I'm sorry I didn't answer your question." A ragged breath. Murata closed his eyes, let himself be held, and held onto hope. "I guess you did remind me a little bit of Yuuri, at first, except then I kept noticing more how the two of you were different. It's...I guess I can't say I know for sure that I wasn't attracted to you in part because you look a little bit like him, but...it's more than that. It was always more than that. You put me at ease more than I ever thought...I like who I am around you. I hated who I was around Yuuri, and then I found you...Listen, I meant what I said about not chasing him now. Even if he came and told me he'd changed his mind, I'd turn him away. I don't want someone else. I don't know if I deserve you, but I love you."

Now Murata felt that he might be shaking as well, but he cleared his throat and thought he managed to pull of something that was recognizable as at least being intended to be a dramatically pompous tone. "No one deserves the Great Sage, Ken Murata."

"Hn. No one deserves to have him inflicted upon them, you mean?"

"Well, yes." Murata grinned with relief at the familiar banter and let Wolfram pull his head back for a kiss.

A few minutes later, Murata said, "You know, no one's very likely to knock at the library door before they come in."

"Well, then they'll learn better for next time."

"I suppose so."


End file.
